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Eminent 
Engineers 



T T T 



Brief Biographies of Thirty-two of the Inventors 

and Engineers who did most to further 

mechanical progress 



T T T 
By 

DWIGHT GODDARD, 

h 

Member of American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers, 




1906. 

The Derry-Collard Company, 
New York. 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

MAH 17 1906 

Copyrlifht Entry 
CLASS C:t\ XXc. No. 
OPY B. ' 



/9. 

CLA^w. V 



Copyright 1905 
by D wight Goddard 






Preface. : 

These short biographies were originally written 
from 1903 to 1906 and issued in monthly numbers by 
Wyman & Gordon, manufacturers of drop forgings, 
Worcester, Mass. and Cleveland, Ohio. 

Some of them have been entirely re-written others 
enlarged and revised, and others left as originally 
written. 

In the selection of names, those have been includ- 
ed who have accomplished something of importance 
in the development and application of power and 
machinery. 

For convenience, the book is divided into two 
parts — European and American. 

Cleveland, October ist, 1905. 



List^of Americans 

T T T 

Pages. 

Benjamin Franklin (1705-1790) 9-16 

John Fitch (1743-1798) 18-26 

Nathan Read ( 1759-1849) 29-34 

Oliver Evans (1755-1819) 36-41 

Robert Fulton (1765-1815) 43-48 

John Stevens ( 1749-1838) 57-58 

Robert L. Stevens 57-58 

Eli Whitney ( 1765-1825) 60-69 

Thomas Blanchard (1788-1864) 70-77 

Elias Howe (1819-1867) 78-84 

John Ericsson (1803-1889) 86-98 

Peter Cooper (1791-1883) loo-iio 

George H. Corliss (1817-1888) 110-121 

Alexander L. Holley (1832-1882) 122-131 

William R. Jones (1839-1889) 132-138 

James B. Eads (1820-1887) 140-149 



List of Euro 



peans 

T T ▼ 

Pages. 

Richard Arkwright ( 1722-1792) 150-154 

Thomas Newcomen ( -1750) I55-I59 

James Watt ( 1736-1819) 160-166 

Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) 168-172 

William Murdock (1754-1839) 174-180 

William Symington (18O4-1831) 182-188 

Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) 190-196 

Henry Maudsley ( 1770-1831 ) 198-204 

George Stephenson (1781-1847) 206-215 

I. K. Brunei (1806-1859) 216-226 

James Nasmyth (1808-1890) 228-233 

Alfried Krupp (1812-1887) 234-239 

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) 240-253 

Sir Joseph Whitworth (1803- 1887) • 254-260 

Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) 262-269 

Sir William Siemens (1823-1883) 270-280 




Benjamin Franklin. 
1705-1790 



From painting by 

Joitph Seffrien Dupplis 
Oivned by John Bigeloic^ 

Nciu York 



is, ijSs 



Benjamin Franklinc 



T T T 

There are good reasons for including the name of 
Benjamin FrankHn in a list of American inventors. 

He was born in Boston, 1705, of English ancestry, 
who, for three or four generations in a straight line, had 
been blacksmiths. His father was a candle maker and, 
after a very limited education, Benjamin was set at this 
work. It was so repugnant to him that he threatened to 
run aw^ay to sea. His father had sense enough not to 
force him too far and apprenticed him to his older brother 
James, who was a printer. This was more to his taste, 
especially as it gave him better opportunity to read. He 
became an omnivorous reader, sitting up till early morn- 
ing to read the books he had borrowed, or bribed other 
boys to borrow for him. He began to write verses and 
essays for the paper published by his brother when only 
thirteen years old, sending them in under an assumed 
name and enjoying the speculations of his brother and the 
other printers as to who the real author might be. He 
very early began to appreciate excellence of thought and 
style in good literature and regret his own lack of edu- 
cation. He set to work with determination to overcome 
this and succeeded rarely. His abilities becoming known, 
he was used more and more by his brother for important 
work and, when difficulties arose from a too free criticism 
of those in authority and James was arrested and his 



Franklin. 

paper suppressed, Benjamin was freed from his appren- 
ticeship and made the owner and editor of the paper, so 
that pubhcation could be resumed. When James was 
released, Benjamin took advantage of his freedom to run 
away to New York and Philadelphia. He had already 
become proficient as a printer, knew how to make ink, 
engrave type and make the other knick-nacks of a print- 
ing shop. He landed in Philadelphia in a happy-go-lucky 
fashion, when only nineteen years old, in 1725. He found 
work in a printing shop, made friends rapidly and in a 
year was sent to London by Gov. Keith, without money, 
on a wild goose chase to buy type and printing machinery. 
He was in London for a year and a half, making 
friends as usual, working for the best printers, learn- 
ing all he could about his trade and reading everything he 
could lay his hands on. When only 23, he entered his 
first partnership, whose entire burden he was obliged to 
assume within a few months. With great energy he 
pushed this enterprise to an immediate success, and soon 
gained the reputation of being the best printer in Amer- 
ica. He showed an amazing range of resources, and 
scented business in most unsuspected sources. Before 
long he was Government printer, and was given profitable 
contracts to print money by different Colonies. Soon he 
began to publish books, and opened a salesroom in con- 
nection with the printing-office, where he kept for sale not 
only his own printing, but also imported books, and sold 
soap, salves, indentured servants, stationery; pictures, 
liquor, cheese, cod, cloth, stoves, tea, spectacles, etc., etc., 
etc. Everything he touched went. His good sense and 
exhaustless resources won prompt success in everything. 
Other printers published almanacs. He enlivened his with 
Poor Richard's sayings until it was in demand from 

10 



Franklin. 

Massachusetts to Georgia. He laid his plans to publish 
a newspaper, but his rival got the start of him; so he 
waited until it failed, when he bought it in cheap. Im- 
mediately it changed character, and became the first real 
news paper in America. Its pages were enlivened by 
some of Franklin's best work. He did not hesitate to 
use its columns for poking fun at high and low, exasper- 
ating his competitors and booming his own enterprises. 
Among the novel features he introduced were advertise- 
ments, illustrations, and letters to the editor. 

In 1766 he sold out to a partner for a handsome sum. 
Meanwhile, he had undertaken other business ventures, 
all of which prospered, till he became one of the rich men 
of America. As early as 1743 he began to accept public 
office, and from that time on he was continuously in the 
public service. He was successively Chairman of Com- 
mittee of Safety, Colonel of Pennsylvania militia, Bur- 
gess to Pennsylvania Assembly, Postmaster of Philadel- 
phia, Deputy Postmaster General for the Colonies, Agent 
for the Colonies to England, Commissioner to Canada, 
Commissioner to France, Minister to France, President 
of Pennsylvania, and in each place he used his very great 
abilities to expedite public afifairs. 

Franklin was a many sided man and it is hard to say 
on which he was the greatest. 

Was he most notable as a statesman? It might be. 
His native good sense, shrewdness and wealth of resource 
— combined in one eminently genial, tactful, patient and 
persistent — made him an ideal diplomat. He sought in 
everything to allay friction and bring about friendly rela- 
tions. 

He was far-seeing in his attitude toward the union 
of the Colonies, relations with foreign nations, framing 

II 



Franklin. 

of the Constitution, slavery, taxation and a monetary sys- 
tem, but never sought to force his ideas on others in a 
way that would leave a sting behind. 

As Burgess for Pennsylvania, combating the avari- 
cious claims of the Proprietors; as the energetic Post- 
master General for the Colonies ; as the conciliatory agent 
of the Colonies in England, during the increasing perplex- 
ities and animosities of the years just preceding the Rev- 
olution; as the astute Commissioner to France to nego- 
tiate aid and recognition for the rebellious Colonies ; as 
the forbearing first ]\Iinister to France ; as the first Presi- 
dent of Pennsylvania, he stood head and shoulders above 
his fellow colonials, above all save one — General Wash- 
ington. 

Jeft'erson said that he had been associated with both 
these men, and never heard either speak more than ten 
minutes at a time, and then only on the most important 
points. John Adams, in one of his fits of littleness, con- 
trasted his own services in Congress, claiming to have 
been, himself, ''active and alert in every branch of busi- 
ness, '^ * "'' constantly proposing measures, sup- 
porting, * * * opposing, Hi * * discussing and 
arguing on every question," with the services of Franklin, 
who was seen, he says, "from day to day, sitting in 
silence, a great part of the time fast asleep." Yet Frank- 
lin was appointed on every important committee, and 
Adams on few. 

And yet we oftener think of Franklin as a scientist. 
His particular friends in England and on the Continent 
were scientists — Hartley, Hume, Herschel, Lavoisier, 
Priestly. 

His letters were read with attention, and printed by 
the leading scientific societies of England and France. 

12 



Franklin. 

He was the founder of the American Philosophical Soci- 
ety. He was honored with degrees by Yale, Harvard, St. 
Andrew's, Edinburgh and Oxford because of his real con- 
tributions to scientific knowledge. He discovered in 1743 
that storms travel in an opposite direction to the wind. 
In 1746 he began his investigations of the oneness of 
magnetism, electricity and lightning, that culminated in 
his statement of the true nature of electricity, and its 
positive and negative states. It was quite characteristic 
of Franklin to turn this knowledge to some useful pur- 
pose — of which we shall speak later. His discovery and 
charting of the Gulf Stream was also appreciated by the 
scientific world. He first suggested the electrical origin 
of the aurora, and made original research in regard to 
sunspots, shooting stars, heat values of different colors, 
light, heat, fire, air, evaporation, tides, rainfall, geology, 
wind, whirlwinds, water-spouts, ventilation, sound and 
ether. He appears to have been in correspondence, at 
some period of his life, with about every scientist of note 
of his generation. -^' 

As has been said, he inherited mechanical faculties 
from a long line of blacksmith ancestors. As a printer's 
apprentice he had exceptional training under the most 
skillful English craftsmen, and learned also the art of 
making ink, engraving and type-casting. 

In later years his printing-office won a high reputa- 
tion for the excellence of its product. He made the first 
copper-plate press seen in this country, and experimented 
with stereotyping. 

He was a natural mechanic, and in his scientific let- 
ters he often speaks of ''little machines that I have made." 
He made very many little inventions, but, as he made no 

13 



Franklin. 

eflfort to perfect them and did not believe in patents, it is 
natural that little came of most of them. 

We will therefore speak only of a few of the more 
important. It was quite characteristic of Franklin to turn 
every observation to some practical use. Thus, when he 
observed the great waste of fuel in the open fire-places of 
his day, he proposed to have the heat, after ascending, to 
descend and heat the surrounding air before entering the 
chimney. From this came the now well-known Franklin 
stove, which has for over a century and a half heated our 
liomes with a saving of three-quarters of the fuel. 

Again, when experimenting to prove the oneness of 
electricity and lightning, he thought also how to prevent 
the danger from descending lightning, and invented the 
now universally-used lightning rod. 

After observing the experiment of bringing music 
from glass tumblers partially filled wdth water, he de- 
signed his famous ''harmonica," that was more curious 
and musical than useful. 

\Mien the cook threw greasy water overboard, all on 
board might have seen the efifect it produced on the wake 
of the ship, but it was Franklin alone that grasped its sig- 
nificance and proposed to the world the possibility of 
using oil during times of tempest, to quiet the violence of 
the waves. 

Then there was the proposal that he made to use 
copper plates to print on china. Before Argand made his 
lamp, Franklin had constructed a lamp with a pipe in the 
midst, 'Svhich supplied fresh and cool air to the lights.'' 

He read that the Chinese divided the holds of their 
boats into separate chambers by tightly-caulked parti- 
tions, and at once suggested the advisability of doing the 
same in our larger ships. He drew up a plan for fire- 

14 



Franklin. 

proofing a house. He invented double spectacles for dis- 
tance and reading. He constructed a novel clock. He 
suggested improvements in letter-copying presses and 
printing presses. Washington writes of 'Visiting a 
machine at Dr. Franklin's (called a mangle) for press- 
ing, in place of ironing clothes from the wash.'^ 

And yet some of us always think of Franklin as a 
writer. Here again his many-sidedness is baffling. Was 
he best revealed as a humorist ? Certainly his Poor Rich- 
ard's proverbs have been most widely printed, even to 
this day, of American writings. Franklin easily takes his 
place as the first of that captivating company of American 
humorists — witty, sane, true, cheering — that our own 
ever-refreshing Mr. Dooley shows to be still with us. 

Some of his best works from a literary point of view 
were his short essays, written during his latter years in 
France, for the entertainment of his friends. He was 
better revealed, however, in his journalistic writings, 
which began when he was sixteen and for fifty years made 
him the dread of his political opponents. His facility 
with words, ready satire and keen sense of humor made 
him a tower of strength to whatever cause he espoused. 

Then his letters were eagerly sought, and whether 
political, business, social or philosophical, were models of 
their kind — clear, logical, convincing, brilliant, always 
cheerful and good-humored. 

His autobiography was one of the most popular ever 
written. His philosophical and scientific papers were 
always straightforward, luminous and informing. 

He avoided drafting state papers, wrote only one 
book and few long essays, and yet he was unquestionably 
the foremost American writer of his age. 

Together these qualities and faculties made him the 

15 



Franklin, 

f^^reatest man of America even to this day, worthy to be 
classed with the greatest of all time. 

Physically he was about five feet ten inches high and 
quite stout. By nature he was inclined to be indolent, 
and self-indulgent. He w^as far from being a saint, but 
his rare good sense kept him from excess. 

He was born in 1705, and died in 1790. He had 
lived a long life in a genial, generous, useful fashion, per- 
mitting a rare good sense to be the handmaid of a warm 
love for his fellow men. He closed it as he himself had 
sung six years before the summons came : 
*'If Life's compared to a Feast, 

Near Four-score Years Fve been a Guest, 

Fve been regaled with the best, 
And feel quite satisfyd. 

'Tis time that I retire to Rest ; 

Landlord, I thank you ! — Friends, Good Night." 

▼ T T 



16 




Fitclfs Steamboat lyyo 



John Fitch. 



1743-1798 



T T T 



In the latter years of his hfe John Fitch looked back 
on an incident of his childhood as a harbinger of the ill- 
luck that persistently followed him to his grave. 

He was only five years old when left alone in the 
house with his younger sister. She accidently set fire 
to a bundle of flax. John, seeing it afire, although it was 
pretty heavy, tugged it to the fireplace and then ran after 
the second bundle and dragged that to the fireplace and 
stamped on it until it was extinguished, thus saving the 
house and his little sister. He was badly burned, and 
while still smarting his older brother came in and with- 
out a word of enquiry, boxed his ears and beat him 

18 



Fitch. 

severely. When his father returned later he also gave 
another beating. Certainly his whole life is a story of 
hard experience, whether we call it luck or see in it a 
natural cause and effect. 

John was born in 1743 at Windsor, Conn. His father 
was a stern, close man, typical of New England, who 
wasted no outward show of affection on his children. 
At ten he was taken from school and set to work on the 
farm. He had a strong desire for learning, and young 
as he was worked overtime to get money with which to 
buy a geography. At twelve he had learned a little of 
surveying. At thirteen he received the grudging con- 
sent of his father to go to school for a few months more. 
At this time he learned some more surveying. Then he 
went back to farm work, had a few months before the 
mast, and then started in to learn the trade of a clock- 
maker. 

His usual hard luck attended him, and after three 
years he purchased his freedom, having been kept almost 
entirely at farming, with a smattering of general brass- 
work, but in total ignorance of clock or watch making. 

Then he had a run of good luck, went into brasswork 
on a capital of twenty shillings, and in two years had 
paid all his debts, had fifty pounds ahead, and had learned 
to clean clocks. 

Then hard luck set in again. He went into the 
manufacture of potash, that interfered with his brass busi- 
ness, took him to another part of the State, and ultimately 
ruined him. To make it doubly unfortunate, it brought 
him in contact with the one who became his wife. She 
proved to be a scold, and made his life so unbearable that 
he finally closed up his affairs and left her forever. 

For some months he roamed about as an itinerant 

19 



Fitch. 

laborer, passing from Albany to New York and Trenton. 
Here he learned to make brass buttons and silversmith's 
work. When trade was dull, he set out peddling brass 
buttons, and did well. Then opportunity offering he 
bought "the finest set of silversmith tools in America," 
and began making silver and brass buttons in quantity 
with such success that at the breaking out of the Revolu- 
tion he was worth 800 pounds. 

Being an earnest patriot he sought military appoint- 
ment, but was set aside for other men. He found plenty 
of work as armorer for the State of New Jersey until the 
British approached, when he left with others. For sev- 
eral years he followed the American army as a peddler, 
bringing supplies from the cities to the army. He made a 
good deal of money at this, but it being in paper currency 
and depreciating rapidly, he invested it in Western land 
warrants. Then to insure these investments he secured an 
appointment of deputy surveyor, and went to Kentucky, 
and located his lands. In 1782 he made a second trip 
down the Ohio, but was captured by the Indians, and lost 
all his property. He endured much suffering for several 
months, and was then in the hands of the British for 
months more. While with them, with his usual industry, 
he cultivated a garden and began to make brass buttons. 

When captured he had kept possession of an engrav- 
er's tool, and with this made other tools, until he had a 
vise, lathe and forge. With these tools he made brass 
and silver buttons, clocks, and repaired watches. 

After his release he was forty days en route to New 
York, and about penniless. At this time the disposition 
of the Northwest lands was being considered. Fitch, from 
his knowledge of the region, felt that a good profit might 
be made from a pre-survey. He formed a company, and 

20 



Fitch. 

in three seasons roughly surveyed over 200,000 acres. 
Congress finally disposed of the land in such a way that 
he had no advantage from his pre-survey. 

In 1785 he had his first idea of a steam wagon, but 
after trying for a week to draft one, he gave it up for 
what seemed to him the more feasible plan of a boat pro- 
pelled by steam. At this time he had never seen, and, as 
he avers, never heard of a steam engine. In a few weeks' 
time he had completed his plans, and showed them to his 
friend. Rev. Mr. Irwin, who produced a book from his 
library giving a description of a Watt engine. It came 
as a surprise to Fitch, who had supposed himself to be the 
inventor of the steam engine as well as the steamboat. At 
first he was "very much chagrined,'' but set to work to 
make a working model. The model was made and tried 
about July, 1785. It worked all right, but the small pad- 
dle-wheel being relatively deep in the water lost much 
power. 

After spending more time on his experiments he 
hegan seeking aid from individuals and Congress, but to 
little purpose. Sept. 2y, 1785, he presented to the Amer- 
ican Philosophical Society a full description and model 
of his boat. In this model he employed an endless chain 
with blades on it passing over rolls on the sides of the boat. 
He sought assistance from Franklin, but received none, 
and in a short time Franklin presented a paper himself 
to the Philosophical Society, in which he suggested using 
steam to propel boats. Franklin's plan was to pump water 
from the front and discharge, under pressure, at the 
stern. 

During the winter of 1785-86 Fitch sought state as- 
sistance from Washington, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsyl- 
vania, New Jersey, and Delaware. He received encour- 

21 



Fitch. 

agement, but no financial aid. It was during these jour- 
neys that he heard of Rvimsey, but as his was a mechan- 
ical boat and not a steamboat, he felt no uneasiness. 

In the spring of 1786 he heard that one Donaldson, 
to whom he had shown his plans, claimed to have invented 
a steamboat and was going to apply to the State of Penn- 
sylvania for exclusive rights. Angered at this. Fitch at 
once applied for exclusive rights, and was fortunate in 
getting in his application first. Without waiting he hur- 
ried to New Jersey, and made the same application, which 
was granted. Then Fitch set to work to form a com- 
pany to build a steamboat, in which he was successful. 
The next difficulty was to construct a steam engine. There 
were at this time only three in the country, aild they were 
old atmospheric engines, used for pumping out mines. 

After trying to find some one capable of making one, 
Fitch decided to make it himself, with the aid of Henry 
Voight, an ingenious watch-maker. They first made a 
model cylinder one inch in diameter. Then they made one 
of three inches. They bought a skiflf and tried various de- 
vices — "a screw of paddles,'' an endless chain, and one or 
two other modes — that worked indififerently. Then Fitch 
thought of a series of paddles, operated by cranks, that 
worked very well, and when the engine was applied, 
moved the skiff at a satisfactory speed. 

It was then decided to build a larger boat with a 
twelve-inch cylinder. In spite of the success with the 
model, money came very slowly and Fitch again tried to 
get assistance from the State. Although he failed in this, 
he did succeed, in 1787, in getting exclusive rights to use 
steam and fire for the propulsion of boats in Pennsyl- 
vania, Delaware and New York. 

With this encouragement the larger engine was be- 

22 



Fitch. 

gun. The drawings and full description of this engine 
have been lost or destroyed, but Fitch used steam at both 
ends of the cylinder, and employed a separate jet con- 
denser with air pump. It is interesting to note that Watt 
secured his patent for a double-acting engine in 1782, but 
did not make a second engine on that principle until 1787, 
which is the same year in which Fitch made this larger 
engine for his steamboat. 

While they had the correct idea, they were ignorant 
of the correct proportions, and that which followed 
showed how much they were embarrassed. 

After a long series of mishaps, the boat was tried, 
Aug. 22, 1787, in the presence of most of the convention 
for framing a Federal Constitution. The boat went about 
forty miles at the rate of three or four miles an hour, 
somewhat less than was expected. It was enough, how- 
ever, to encourage another attempt. 

Just at this time Rumsey appeared and claimed that 
his mechanical boat of 1784 was operated by steam, and 
sought to secure the rights already granted to Fitch. Then 
followed a most vexatious fight of words that lasted for 
years. Rumsey had considerable money and influence on 
his side, and Fitch was almost alone, having only a com- 
pany of discouraged stockholders to back him up. The 
fight w^ent on with disheartening slowness and indefinite- 
ness. 

In 1788, in the midst of this discouragement, it was 
decided to build a larger boat. After no end of trouble, 
it was decided to use the old twelve-inch cylinder, and a 
pipe boiler on a narrower boat, with one set of oars only at 
the stern. The discouragements continued : more of the 
stockholders dropped out, others interfered with the de- 
sign of the machinery, and Fitch became very irasci- 

23 



Fitch. 

ble. He was treated as an iniportunate visionary, laughed 
at bv street loafers, and avoided by men of means. Still 
he kept at it : in rags and desperation. The costly experi- 
ments went on, the boat caught fire, and at last the river 
froze up and stopped work for the winter of 1789. In the 
spring of 1790 the boiler was changed, and other altera- 
tions made, but without success. At last Fitch made up 
his mind that the trouble was in the condenser and made 
a proposal to improve it. His suggestion was treated with 
scant consideration, but finally assented to. The result 
w^as gratifying. April 16, 1790, the boat was tried in the 
face of high winds, and went ''amazingly swift." For the 
first time the public journals condescended to notice the 
invention. 

The boat was run frequently to Burlington at a speed 
of seven and eight miles an hour. After June she made 
regular trips until winter set in, covering no less than 
2,000 miles. At times, she made as much as nine and ten 
miles an hour. On one day she made ninety miles, at an 
average with and against the tide of seven and a half 
miles an hour. 

Fulton was unable to meet this record in the ''Cler- 
mont" seventeen years later. 

During the fall of 1790 every efifort was made to 
l)uil(l a second steamboat in order to save their exclusive 
rights to the waters of \^irginia and the Northwest. They 
ahnost succeeded, but a violent storm wrecked their boat 
at the point of completion. 

During the winter of 1790-91 the legal sparring for 
l)atent rights w^ent on and new troubles among the stock- 
holders made the life of Fitch miserable. 

While they were waiting the tardy action of the pat- 
ent commissioners, it was decided to sell rights in France. 

•^4 



Fitch. 

The patent was granted to Fitch Aug. 26, 1791, but al- 
most duplicate patents were granted at the same time tc 
Rumsey — with intimations that they were at liberty to 
fight it out in the courts. 

Although spasmodic efforts were made to complete 
the new boat, the prospect of continued lawsuits and the 
mishaps of experimental construction dampened the ardor 
of the stockholders, until one after another lost interest. 

By September the boat was completed, but the 
wooden case of the boiler leaked so badly that the effort 
was a failure. Then Fitch, now in extreme poverty, made 
all manner of desperate efforts to raise money to complete 
the boat, but all his efforts ended in disappointment. He 
became almost a monomaniac, and in 1792 seriously con- 
sidered suicide. In anticipation of this event, he pre- 
pared a detailed account of his life and the history of the 
steamboat, which he deposited with the Philadelphia Li- 
brary, with instructions that it vvas not to be opened for 
thirty years after his death. 

Here ends the history of the Philadelphia boats, ex- 
cept the fact that the materials were sold at auction in 

T795. 

In 1793 Fitch was sent to France in connection with 
the sale of the French rights, but being unsuccessful he 
left the drawings and specifications with the American 
consul. Vail, and came home (1794) as a sailor. These 
drawings and specifications were afterward loaned to Rob- 
ert Fulton, and were in his possession for some months. 

Upon his return Fitch made a steamboat out of a 
ship's yawl. The engine cylinder was of wood, the boiler 
was an iron pot, but the interesting thing was a horizon- 
tal shaft with a vertiable screw propeller at the stern. This 
was successfully run on a fresh-water pond near the site 
of the old Tombs prison in New York. 



Fitch. 

Fitch went from here to Philadelphia, and then to 
Kentucky to look up his lands. He found them overrun 
with squatters, and commenced several lawsuits to dis- 
possess them. In extreme poverty and discouragement 
he deliberately set about self-destruction. In a fit of sick- 
ness, sometime in July, 1798, he committed suicide. 

In physique he was tall and thin, with black hair and 
piercing black eyes. He was a man of sterling character, 
of natural modesty, high integrity, great industry and per- 
serverance. Under the stress of constant misfortune he 
became garrulous, impatient, passionate and morose — the 
natural result of continued misfortune upon one who feels 
his superiority and honesty. 

As a mechanic he was rather more ingenious and 
industrious, than of notable ability. He was a ''tinker" 
rather than an engineer, and it is noticeable that when- 
ever he applied himself to making brass buttons or re- 
pairing clocks and guns, he prospered. His so-called hard 
luck came when he attempted engineering problems that 
were beyond his abilities or training. 

He doubtless should have credit for inventing the 
steamboat, but it needed a greater man than he to gather 
up the results of his experiments and those of Syming- 
ton, Cartwright, Stevens, and others, and by the power of 
a greater engineering ability, to correctly design and pro- 
portion the steamboat that was to survive. For this Ful- 
ton should have credit. 

There is something pathetic in the discouragement 
of the one who, failing, yet prophesies that a man more 
powerful than he will take his ideas and win the honor 
that he craved and had missed. Rut that was Fitch's luck 
to the end. 

26 




Nathan Read 
1759-1849 



From an engraving, the plate for which was made by St. Memin, Phila. , igoi 



28 



Nathan Read. 

T T T 

The name of Judge Nathan Read ought not to be 
omitted from the list of early Americans who made con- 
tribution to the beginning of steam locomotion a^d steam 
navigation. 

Read was a Massachusetts man, born at Warren in 
1759, of English ancestry who came to America as early 
as 1632. His father and wife's uncle were high officers 
in the Revolutionary Army and he was connected with 
some of the wealthy and most respected families of his 
day. 

At the age of nineteen years he entered Harvard Col- 
lege, intending to study for the ministry. He became a 
fine Hebrew scholar and graduated Valedictorian of his 
class. He was a tutor at Harvard College until 1787, 
when he left to study medicine. 

He tired of medicine in a year and opened an apoth- 
ecary shop in wSalem to which he gave attention until 1795. 

It was during these years that his bent for mechanics 
appeared and apparently he devoted no little time to ex- 
periments and building models, especially of boilers and 
engines for land vehicles and boats. His claim to our 
attention is due to his inventions at this time and will be 
considered more in detail later on. 

In 1 79 1 he was elected a member of the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1795 he gave up the 

29 



Read. 

apothecary store and removed to his farm in Danvers. In 
1796 he, with others, erected the Salem Iron Works for 
the manufacture of chain, anchors, and other articles of 
iron for ship building. Read having the chief superin- 
tendence. While here he designed and patented in 1798 
a machine for cutting and heading nails that gave a good 
line of business for many years. In 1800 he was ap- 
pointed a member of Congress and re-elected the follow- 
ing term. In 1802 he was appointed a Special Justice and 
in 1807 removed to Belfast, Maine, where for many years 
he was Chief Justice of the Court in Hancock County. 

He had a fine farm here of 400 acres and thereafter 
gave most of his time to agriculture and interest in educa- 
tional institutions. He never could forget his early taste 
for mechanics, however, and indulged at frequent inter- 
vals in mechanical experiments from which resulted the 
invention of several useful agricultural implements. 

The one thing that Judge Read did in the mechanical 
line for which he should receive the highest credit was 
the invention of the multitubular boiler that made the loco- 
motive and the steamboat possible. 

As early as 1788, when Read was at his apothecary 
store, he became interested in the mechanical propulsion 
of boats and wagons. Others were interested also, but 
were mainly considering the method of propulsion, wath 
little thought of the source of power other than horses or 
men. Read fitted out a boat with side wheels on a double 
crank shaft, running in grooves across the sides of the 
boat, so placed that he could operate the cranks with his 
hands instead of oars. He used this boat at Danvers in 
1788. At this same time, and the following year, he was 
experimenting with a steam eii<^ine and l)oiler, which he 
used on both a l^oat and a wai^on. 

30 



Read. 

To thoroughly understand and appreciate the novelty 
of Read's inventions, it will be well to recall what others 
had done before him and the extent at this time of knowl- 
edge about steam and engines. 

In England it was only 1782 that Watt had invented 
double acting steam engines and only one or two years 
previous to Read's experiments had they become com- 
monly known. Symington secured his first steamboat 
patent in 1787 and an experimental boat was made the 
next year. Murdock made his model locomotive in 1784. 

In America, Fitch made his first steamboat in 1785 
and his second in 1787 and did not actually have one run- 
ning regular trips until 1790, while the Livingston-Roose-- 
velt-Stevens boat was not made until 1798 and Fulton's 
''Clermont" did not come until 1807, twenty years after 
Read's experiments. 

Fitch's experiments were made with a single tube 
boiler set in brick. His engine used steam at both ends 
but he was able to obtain steam of only eight to ten pounds 
and used a cumbersome condenser. 

Read heard of his experiments and made up his mind 
that if steam navigation was to be a success this outfit 
must be reduced radically in weight. As a result of his 
study, he built a model of a vertical multitubular boiler to 
be made of copper or iron with 78 tubes arranged in 
circles. The outside rows of tubes were open top and 
bottom and the inner rows were shorter and open only 
at the top, the space thus left at the bottom served as a 
firebox. There was a double shell with a hole in the bot- 
tom where the grate was placed. 

The water filled the tubes and space between the 
shells and was supplied from a supplementary tank placed 
above the boiler which could be filled and closed, when the 

31 



Read. 

connection to the boiler could be opened so that the water 
would pass to the boiler by gravitation. The flame passed 
among the tubes and by a flue through the upper space 
between the double shells and through the water tank to 
preheat the supply. When we recall the exceedingly 
heavy and crude boilers made of brick and castings which 
were used by Watt, Fitch and all others we appreciate 
what an advance was this portable boiler of Read's. 

In addition to the advantage of its lightness, it at once 
made it possible to secure steam of high pressure. Fitch 
and others were only able to secure eight to ten pounds 
pressure while Read advocated and was able to supply 
steam of 15 to 20 pounds pressure and thus made a source 
of energy that was practical for use on boats and wagons 
without a condenser. 

He also made a model of a high pressure engine tak- 
ing steam at both ends and designed to run either with or 
without a condenser. His first models included a boat 
with paddle wheels on a shaft on which there were two 
gears, designed to be operated by flexible teeth spanning 
the gear and engaging the top and bottom of the gears 
alternately as the piston moved back and forth. The 
paddle wheels could be raised and lowered as the boat was 
loaded or empty. 

There are some grounds for believing that he pro- 
posed to use the simple crank connection also — as he cer- 
tainly used them for hand power. 

Having the endorsement of the Academy of Science 
and a number of prominent men, Read went to New York 
in 1790 to apply for Govei-nment assistance and monopoly. 
He found there seeking the same ends. Fitch, Rumsey and 
Stevens. The discussions that arose resulted in the pass- 
ati^c of the first national patent law. Read discovered in 

32 



Read. 

reading French records that side wheels had already been 
proposed in France and being under the conviction that his 
application must contain only novel devices, he re-wrote 
his application, substituting a chain of paddles running 
over shafts placed fore and aft, the lower section in the 
water to propel the boat and the returning section being 
above and entirely out of water. When his first applica- 
tion was read before Congress the proposal to apply the 
invention to land carriages provoked so much ridicule that 
Read omitted that claim in his revised application. 

Congress, in 1791, as we all know, granted patents 
to all four. Fitch, Rumsey, Read, and Stevens, with per- 
mission to fight it out in the courts if they were found to 
conflict. 

Fitch's patent was for applying the force of steam for 
propelling a boat by forcing water through a tube, and to 
cranks and paddles. 

Rumsey's was for the same and for an improved 
method of generating steam by passing a small quantity 
of water through an incurvated tube placed in a furnace, 
both for boats, and every species of engines and for rais- 
ing water. Stevens' patent was much the same as Rum- 
sey's. 

Read's patent was for his multitubular boiler, im- 
proved cylinder, and a boat with chain wheels. 

It is thus seen that while Fitch, Rumsey, and Stevens 
were granted patents that involved mutual interference, 
the patent of Read did not clash with the others. 

Had Read made the same effort to bring his patent 
into actual use as did the others, he would doubtless have 
succeeded where they failed, for he was a good engineer 
and when success did come in later years to Fulton for 
the steamboat, and to Stevenson for the locomotive, in 

33 



Read. 

each case the successful device was the multitubular boiler 
and the high pressure cylinder that Read had invented. 
How slow was the evolution, is seen in the fact, that i6 
years elapsed after Read's patent was granted, before 
Fulton's "Clermont'' made its successful trip, and 38 years 
before the multitubular boiler was first applied to the loco- 
motive in Stevenson's Rocket, which alone was success- 
ful in the Rainhill trial. 

Judge Read lived on for many years, but evidently 
made no great efifort to put his inventions to practical use. 
His easy going nature, his comfortable circumstances, and 
even his uncommonly good education hade him less in- 
cHned to cope with the obstacles that lay in the path of the 
successful introduction of the steamboat and locomotive 
a generation before the times were ready to receive them. 
Even Fitch's tremendous earnestness failed to do it and 
Stevens' wealth did not avail. 

Judge Read had a tall fine figure with an intellectual 
face, was modest, and unobtrusive, but active and inter- 
ested in all that had to do with the higher life of the com- 
munity. He lived to be ninety years of age, dying in 
1849, but retained to the end the full possession of his in- 
tellectual powers, and enjoyed to the last the delights of his 
beautiful estate at Belfast. 

Try 



34 




Oliver Evans. 
1755-1819 



r!3 



From a rare engraving by W, G, yackson^ 

in possession of Ridgeivay Library^ Phil.^ 

and Wyman & Gordon^ Worcester, 



35 



Oliver Evans. 

T T T 

Oliver Evans had within him the making of a great 
engineer. He was born near Newport, Del., in 1755 or 
1756, of farmer parentage. At fourteen he was appren- 
ticed to a wheelwright, but continued his eager efforts to 
secure an education by studying by the light of burning 
shavings after the long work hours were ended. 

While still an apprentice, the idea came to him that 
there ought to be some way of propelling land carriages 
without animal power. He gave much thought to it, but 
made no advance until he heard of the experiment of plug- 
ging water in a gun-barrel and exploding it in a forge 
fire. Evans' active mind saw at once that here was the 
power he wanted. He met with a book that described the 
old atmospheric engine. He was astonished to find that 
they made no use of the elastic force of steam. He went 
at his problem with renewed ardor, and soon declared to 
his friends that he could make a steam-carriage, but only 
met ridicule on every hand. He made many experiments, 
and persevered for some time, but at last, when his means 
were exhausted, gave it up for a time. 

At twenty-three years of age he invented a machine 
for making card teeth, but was defrauded of all profit. 
Soon after he invented a machine for pricking the card, 
cutting, bending and setting the teeth, but being dis- 

36 



Evans. 

couraged from his failure to derive any profit from his 
first invention, never built one. 

At twenty-five he married and went into business with 
his brothers, who were millers, and who appreciated his 
mechanical talents. He at once began that series of in- 
ventions that ultimately revolutionized the manufacture of 
flour. His inventions in this line included the grain ele- 
vator, the conveyor, the hopper-boy, the drill, and the de- 
scender. They effected a saving of over one half in the 
cost of labor, made a .better flour and produced more than 
twenty-eight pounds of superfine flour to the bushel. 

Various applications of these inventions comprise 
about all that is used even until now for the movement of 
grain in the manufacture of flour. The same inventions 
are also at the basis of all modern systems of conveying. 

These inventions were made in 1783, and were so 
successful that his ow^n mill ran after starting, with prac- 
tically no attention. He spent thousands of dollars and 
four or five years of time, but his efforts to have others 
adopt them were at first entirely unsuccessful. In 1786 
he succeeded in securing exclusive rights in the states of 
Pennsylvania and Maryland. To facilitate the sale of 
these licenses he wrote his first book, 'The Millwright and 
Miller's Guide." Not many were sold, but a great many 
were distributed. His agents traveled during the next 
thirteen years over 100,000 miles, selling these licenses. 
At first they had small success. The inventions were 
called "rattle-traps," and one old German is reported say- 
ing, ''Now dis mus peen sum tamp lazy fellow to mak dem 
gondrivers." 

His was one of the three patents granted the first 
year of the national patent law, but the patent had expired 
before any amount of business had been realized. Through 

37 



Evans. 

some technicality he was denied a reissue, and millers at 
once hegan to adc^pt it. .After a full hearing, in 1808, he 
received a reissue of his patent, and greatly increased the 
charge for using. These things involved him in many 
and costly law-suits, but toward the end the patents were 
profitable. 

\Mien he asked for the exclusive rights to his milling 
inventions, in 1786, he asked also for protection in build- 
ing steam road-wagons. Pennsylvania ignored the request 
as being too visionary for attention. Maryland granted 
it on the plea of only one man, who said that no one else 
wanted the right and it could do no possible harm. In 
the years that followed he diligently sought some one to 
supply the means. He showed draw^ings and explained 
his plans to a number of men, capitalists and scientists, 
but in vain. Some time during these years he sent an 
agent to England with drawings of his engine. They were 
shown to a number of men interested, but failed to secure 
financial assistance. 

In 1 80 1 he decided to build an engine at his own 
expense, and before it was done it had cost him $3,700 
and financially ruined him. It had a six-inch cylinder and 
eighteen-inch stroke ; was set up in public view, and used 
to grind plaster and saw marble. It was a mechanical 
success and permanently identified him with the steam- 
engine industry. 

In 1802 he received an order to build an engine to run 
a boat which was being built at New Orleans. It was 
built and installed, but the boat was almost at once 
stranded by floods in an inaccessible place. This ended 
the project, with a loss of some $15,000. The engine was 
removed and used to run a saw-mill successfully until the 

3S 



Evans. 

mill was burnt by incendiaries. Ten years later it was 
used to run a cotton-press. 

In 1803 Evans began business regularly as a builder 
of steam engines. One of his first orders was from the 
municipality for a steam-dredger to clean the docks. As 
his shop was some mile and a half from the river, he 
decided to mount the scow on wheels and run it as a steam 
wagon as far as the river. This was done, and for several 
days it was on exhibition running about one of the public 
squares. Evans has the honor, therefore, of making the 
first successful steam-wagon, in 1804. I^ was a crude 
affair, with a cylinder of only five inches and nineteen-inch 
stroke. When afloat he substituted a paddle-wheel at 
the stern, and at once the boat started off and had no 
difficulty in passing all other craft on the river. The 
engine was far too small for the load, and hence the speed 
was not enough to convince scoffers as to its usefulness, 
but Evans offered, on a wager of $3,000, to construct a 
road-wagon that would run on a good, level road against 
the swiftest horse they could produce. He also tried to 
make a contract with a turnpike company to construct a 
steam freight- wagon to run either on, the best roadbed or 
on rails, but both efforts failed to awaken interest. 

At this time, about 1805, he began writing his second 
book, 'The Young Engineer's Guide.'' It was intended 
to be very complete and ''abstruse," but as his engine ven- 
tures nearly ruined him for the second time, he abbre- 
viated it and called it 'The Abortion of the Young Engi- 
neer's Guide." It suggested proportions for a steam en- 
gine as follows : Cylinder, twenty inches diameter, five- 
feet stroke, running under a boiler pressure of 194 to 220 
pounds per square inch, and gave certain rules for cut- 
off. It recommended a cast-iron boiler three feet in diam- 

39 



Evans. 

eter, and twenty feet long, with fire at one end, returning 
through a single internal flue. The Columbian engine was 
afterward built on these proportions. 

In 1807 he established the Alars works for the con- 
struction of steam engines, and by 18 12 records ten en- 
gines in use, and in 1816 speaks of fifty. He wrote also 
two or three "Addresses" to the people of the United 
States that reveal the straits to which he was reduced at 
times. In one of these he says that he destroyed at one 
time, in sheer discouragement, the drawings and records 
of eighty inventions. 

In 18 19 his machine shop and foundry was burned by 
an incendiary, a boy of twenty. The news of it hastened 
his death. 

It is to be regretted that Oliver Evans failed to receive 
the financial support that he desired and needed to pro- 
duce a road-wagon or steamboat according to his ideas ; 
it is to be regretted, because Oliver Evans exhibited in all 
the work that he did produce, an exceptional mechanical 
judgment. 

He probably would not have produced a perfect loco- 
motive or steam boat but he would have done something 
creditable and have hastened the coming of the practical. 
When we remember that he lived at the very beginnings 
of the use of power machinery, that he was poor and was 
thw^arted at every advance by the selfish conservatism of 
the capitalists of his day, we can appreciate the obstacles 
against which he struggled and understand the compara- 
tively small measure of fame that has been his reward. 

If he had lived in later times he would have been an 
engineer of rank. He did enough, however, in introducing 
the high-pressure steam engine to deserve the credit paid 
him in the following: 



Evans. 

^'Wherever the steam-mill resounds with the hum of 
industry, whether grinding flour on his native Schuylkill 
or cutting logs in Oregon, there do you find a monument 
to the memory of Oliver Evans/' 

T T T 



4t 




Robert Fulton. 
1765-1815 



42 



Robert Fulton. 



T T T 

Robert Fulton was the first American engineer of real 
ability and training. 

He was born in a small inland town of Pennsylvania 
in 1765 of Irish parentage. His father died when he was 
young, leaving him with a slight education and the early 
obligation of self-support. Fortunately he had a passion 
for mechanics and drawing, so that before he was seven- 
teen he was supporting himself as an artist and drafts- 
man in Philadelphia. By the time he was of age, he was 
enabled to establish his mother in a home of her own and 
to go himself to England to study painting with the cele- 
brated West. He remained in England some years, a suc- 
cessful artist, and made many acquaintances and friends 
among the gentry and nobility who were of great assist- 
ance to him in his later undertakings. When he was only 
nineteen he had taken out an English patent for improv- 
ing transportation and as early as 1793 there are records 
of his projects to improve inland navigation. In 1794 
came inventions for sawing marble for which he was 
honored by a British society. About this time also, he 
invented a machine for spinning flax and making rope. 
The forerunner of our modern power shovels was his 
invention also. 

In 1796 his plans for a cast-iron aqueduct were ac- 

43 



Fulton. 

cepted and it was constructed across the river Dee, in 
Scotland, and at least one bridge built from his designs. 

He published a book in 1796, when thirty-one years 
old, on Improvements in Canal Navigation, that brought 
him great honor. It was at this time also that he became 
interested in political economy and sociology and wrote 
treatises on these subjects that were well received. In fact 
to the end of his life he consistently looked upon all his 
mechanical interests in the light of their probable effect on 
the increase of human happiness. His undertakings were 
greatly aided by the many beautiful and accurate draw- 
ings with which his skill as an artist and draftsman 
enabled him to freely illustrate his prospectuses and speci- 
fications. 

About 1797 he went to France to introduce his canal 
improvements, but finding little interest he turned his at- 
tention to other subjects. In 1797 he made his first ex- 
periments in the submarine use of explosives. These ex- 
periments were carried out with extreme minuteness and 
precision and gave him a fund of accurate information 
that enabled him to make an early success of his torpedoes. 
He was led through these experiments to the subject of 
submarine navigation in general. He made many fine 
models but was delayed by the lukew^armness of the 
French government. At length I)Onaparte came into 
power and in 1801 gave him such assistance as enabled 
him to carry his experiments to a triumphant success. He 
had perfect control of his boat in sinking, rising, advanc- 
ing and turning. He remained under water several hours, 
traveled a number of miles and returned to his starting 
point. Then he experimented with bombs and torpedoes 
from these submarine boats, blew up an old hulk and 
tried hard to blow uj) some of the visiting English ships, 

44 



Fulton. 

but found them too wary for him. This faihire dampened 
the French interests and they ceased to aid him. The 
EngHsh government, however, took him up and, although 
his experiments were notably successful, they dallied and 
delayed, evidently content to have withdrawn him from 
the French. They would have supported him perhaps if 
he had been willing to give them a monopoly of his 
inventions and he was willing to do this with the single 
exception of his own country. 

Discouraged in his efforts to obtain aid from Eng- 
land, in 1806 he returned to America and carried on his 
experiments under the patronage of the United States 
government. In 1810 Congress appropriated $5,000 for 
further experiments, but through a misunderstanding the 
proposed torpedo attack was inconclusive, for a time the 
government withdrew its aid and Fulton gave his atten- 
tion to steam navigation in which, all along, he had been 
interested. 

Many minds had been at work on the problem of 
steam navigation and with some measure of success. There 
were Papin, Hulls, d'Anxiron, and Henry before the days 
of Fulton, and Watt, Fitch, Rumsey, Roosevelt and Sym- 
ington in his own day, who all succeeded in propelling ex- 
perimental boats by steam. But Fulton was the first who 
really made a practical and commercial success. Fulton 
certainly had knowledge of and access to the plans and 
experiments of some at least of these experimenters, and 
his success was not so much by new inventions as by more 
correctly understanding the mechanical problems involved 
and by designing and i)roi:>ortioning his boat, engines and 
' paddles to meet them. . 

We have no knowledge of when Fulton first turned 
iiis attention to steam navigation, but as early as i/C)^ he 

45 



Fulton. 

had made experiments and plans in which he had great 
confidence. In 1801 Chancellor Livingston met him in 
Paris, and together they made many calculations and 
drawings. As we have before intimated, others were at 
work on the same problem, and Livingston himself had 
already, in 1798, received a monopoly of the steam navi- 
gation in the waters of New York. There were records 
of experiments at this time by others, but nothing that 
was conclusive. Fulton at this early date was abreast of 
all others in his experiments, and he, more than any 
other, had a fund of exact knowledge of displacement, 
bouyancy, friction and power required. 

Li 1803 he experimented in France before the French 
Institute with a boat 66 feet long, eight feet wide, so suc- 
cessfully that he at once ordered an enlarged engine of 
Boulton & Watt to be sent to America. In 1803 the 
monopoly granted to Livingston was transferred to Ful- 
ton and Livingston, and extended for twenty years. 

As soon as Fulton returned to America, he began to 
build his boat that was launched in 1807. This boat was 
called the Clermont and was 133 feet long, 160 tons dis- 
placement. Her engine had a 24-inch cylinder, 4 feet 
stroke and a boiler 20 feet long, 7 feet deep and 8 feet 
wide. She was successfully launched, and, after correct- 
ing a defect in the length of the paddles that Fulton's 
quick ear had detected, at once made the trip to Albany 
and returned with perfect success. Soon after she contin- 
ued to run regular trips to Albany, and always well loaded 
with passengers. From this time on steam navigation was 
a commercial success. Mr. Fulton took out from time to 
time patents on improvements, and in company with Liv- 
ingston defended their sole right to the steam navigation 
of New York waters. 

46 



Fulton. 

Fulton's early interest in canal navigation led him, 
on his return to America, to become interested in the pos- 
sibility of connecting the great lakes and the Hudson river 
by canal. He was appointed a commissioner to investi- 
gate the matter in 1811, and his calculuations and sugges- 
tions were of value when the canal was finally built. 

Returning to Fulton's experiments in explosives and 
submarine navigation, we find that in 18 14 a committee of 
the citizens of New York were appointed to consider some 
proposals of Mr. Fulton for defending New York har- 
bor. He exhibited a model war vessel to be propelled by 
steam, and to carry strong batteries. The committee re- 
ported favorably, and the National Congress authorized 
the President to cause to be built one or more of these 
floating batteries for the defence of the waters of the 
United States. A sub-committee was appointed to build 
the ships, and Robert Fulton was appointed the sole 
engineer. It was his soul that animated the whole under- 
taking. 

At the same time Fulton presented a model of a sub- 
marine boat to the government, by whom it was approved, 
and he began its construction, but before it was com- 
pleted Fulton died, February 4, 1815, at the early age of 
fifty. The building of the submarine boat was abandoned, 
but the frigate was carried to completion, and successful- 
ly launched. July 4, 18 15, she made her first trip with 
full armament to the ocean and back, a distance of fifty- 
three miles, at the average rate, with and against the tide, 
of five and a half miles an hour. 

As we have seen, the steamboat was only one of the 
mechanical problems with which Fulton interested him- 
self and mechanical problems were only one of the de- 
partments in which his varied powers were employed. He 

47 



Fulton. 

was an artist of high merit, a civil engineer of ability, a 
social philosopher of deep insight and warm affection. He 
was conversant with the French, German and Italian lan- 
guages and an excellent mathematician. 

His fame was honestly earned by habits of careful 
experimentation, research and calculation. His conclu- 
sions were preserved in elaborate notes and beautifully 
drawn plans. 

Personally he was tall and slight, with an attractive 
face, beautiful eyes, high forehead, and an abundance of 
dark curly hair. He was modest, friendly, enthusiastic 
and cheerful — one who easily made and retained many 
friends. The universal respect for Fulton's greatness 
showed itself at his death. Legislatures adjourned, state 
and city governments attended his funeral, and honor 
rarely, if ever, given to a private citizen, who had never 
held an office, 

WWW 



48 




John Stevens 
1749-1838 



By kindness of 

Col. E. Ste-venSy Ho bo ken 

From painting by unknoivn artist 



50 



John Stevens. 



T T T 

The story of John Stevens and his sons is very differ- 
ent from that of John Fitch and OHver Evans. These 
latter were hampered by poverty and scant education, that 
limited their usefulness and filled their days with dis- 
couragement. 

On the contrary, John Stevens and his sons were 
favored with every advantage that position, wealth and 
education could give. 

John Stevens was born in 1749, in New York, of 
wealthy parents, and was educated at what is now Col- 
umbia College, both as a civil engineer and lawyer. 

As a young man he held many important positions. 
He was a member of the commission authorized to define 
the boundary between New York and New Jersey. He 
was a Vice-president of the council of the colony of New 
Jersey, a member of the first Continental Congress, 
Treasurer of the State of New Jersey from 1776 to 1779, 
Colonel in the Continental Army, and President of the 
New Jersey convention held to ratify the Constitution of 
the United States. 

Mr. Stevens' interest in steam began about T787, after 
seeing John Fitch's efforts of that year to propel boats b}- 
steam. He was interested in the framing of the national 
patent law, and was one of the first grou]:> to seek a patent. 
Fitch, Read, Rumsey and Stevens contested ior ihe first 

5^ 



Steveni. 

exclusive patents in steam engineering. Stevens' plan 
was much the same as that of Rumsey, and in a way he 
joined efforts with the latter to break down the claims of 
Fitch. Their boiler was a continuous pipe, bent about in 
a brick furnace, connected at the lower end to a reservoir 
of water and delivering steam at the other. Read's claim 
was for a genuine multitubular boiler. They all received 
patents, with permission to fight it out in the courts. 

About 1797 Chancellor Livingstone and Nicholas J. 
Roosevelt secured provisional protection from the state of 
New York for exclusive steam navigation. Roosevelt ap- 
parently furnished the mechanical ideas, and, in after 
years, had much to do with the navigation of the Ohio 
and Mississippi. Stevens and Brunei, the English engi- 
neer, and afterward builder of the first Thames tunnel, 
joined with them to build the first steamboat. It was com- 
pleted in 1798, but was not able to meet the requirements 
of the state. 

They tried a horizontal centrifugal wheel on a boat 
of 30 tons drawing, drawing water at the bottom of the 
boat and discharging it under pressure at the stern. 

Soon after, the company was broken up, Livingstone 
becoming Minister to France, where he met Fulton, and 
the rights were transferred to them. 

In 1804, after several years' experimenting, Stevens 
built a screw steamer. It was 25 feet long by 4 feet wide, 
with a five-foot screw,, with four blades set at an angle of 
35°. The screw was fairly well designed and approxi- 
mated the design now adopted. The engine was a double 
direct-acting, non-condensing engine with 4^ -inch cylin- 
der and 9-inch stroke. The boiler was of the water tubu- 
lar type, with 81 tubes made of 5"8 bore gun barrels, about 

52 



Stevens. 

1 8 inches long, plugged at one end and protruding hori- 
zontally from a central drum. 

This was patented in 1803, and two years later in 
England. The next year he altered this boat to a twin- 
screw steamer, which seems to be the first of this type 
made. 

The boat was only fairly successful, and not fast 
enough to secure the coveted exclusive rights, or to be re- 
produced. Even Stevens had so little faith in the screw 
as to abandon it in his later boats. Thirty years later, in 
the evolution of the steamboat, the screw propeller reap- 
peared in much the same type that Stevens favored in 
1804, and the credit for its successful introduction passed 
to Ericsson. , 

By this time Stevens' second son, Robert L., born in 
1787, began to be his active assistant. Together they 
designed the Phoenix, which was ready for trial within a 
few weeks of Fulton's success. This boat was a side- 
wheeler, 50 feet long, 12 feet wide and 7 feet deep. The 
exclusive right to New York waters having gone to Ful- 
ton by priority of success, Robert boldly steered the 
Phoenix out to sea, weathered a gale and brought her up 
the Delaware, where she was in use for many years. 

Stevens, from this time on, used his very great wealth 
and influence to break down the Fulton monopoly. 

In 181 1 they established the first steam ferry from 
New York to Hoboken to be a part of their stage and 
express line to Philadelphia. 

In 1812 he advocated, before the Erie Canal Com- 
mission, a double-track railroad from Albany to Lake 
Erie to be built instead of the canal. He gave full plans 
and estimates of cost, and proposed a speed of twenty 
to thirty miles an hour. His suggestions were reasonable 

53 




By the kinJness of 
Col. E. A. Ste'vers 



54 



Stevens. 

and statesmanlike, but were unheeded. In 1830 the South 
CaroHna railroad was successfully built on these same 
plans. 

In 18 1 3 he designed the double-hull ferry-boat, with 
one internal wheel operated by horse power. 

In 181 5 he, with his sons, secured the first charter 
granted in the United States for a railroad. It was 
designed to run between Raritan and the Delaware as 
part of their ferry and stage line, but was never built. 

In 1823 they secured a charter for a railroad from 
Philadelphia to Lancaster, which became the first link in 
the great Pennsylvania Railroad. 

In 1824 he secured a patent for railroad construction, 1 — 
and when seventy-seven (in 1826) built the first locomo- 
tive that actually pulled a load, on a track, in America. 
It was only an experiment, but it ran on a circular track 
of 5-foot gauge and 220-foot circumference, pulling a 
half dozen people at the rate of twelve miles an hour. 

The father, John Stevens, died in 1838. He was a 
very energetic man, with a keen sense of the commercial 
value of mechanical improvements. He was an enthu- 
siastic botanist, an excellent classical scholar, a student of 
philosophy, and a statesman. Having ample means, it is 
no wonder that his name is connected with so many inven- 
tions and improvements. 

His eldest son, John C, became a famous yachtsman, 
the founder of the New York Yacht Club, and an owner 
of the America that first won the world's championship. 

The second son, Robert L., was born in 1787, and 
became his father's assistant in 1804, ^^^^1 after 1807 took 
the lead in marine and railroad engineering. 

In 18 1 2 he gave much attention to l)ombs and explo- 

55 



X 



Stevens. 

sives, inventing a successful elongated percussion shell 
that was purcliased by the United States. 

He proposed a circular iron-clad battery for harbor 
defense, which was to be anchored in the center, and slow- 
ly manoeuvred by two screw propellers on the outside. 
It was never built. 

In 1815 he built the Philadelphia, which had a speed 
of eight miles an hour. In 18 18 he invented the cam-board 
cut-off that enabled him to use steam expansively. 

In 1 82 1 he designed the now common ferry-boat with 
over-hanging sides and slips with spring posts. In the 
years that followed he improved Watt's w^alking-beam 
(construction, substituting slides for parallel motion to 
piston rod ; invented the split w-ater- wheel, improved on 
the balanced valve for beam engines, placed boilers on 
wdieel-guards, increased boiler pressure to fifty pounds, 
used iron trusses for hull construction, and w^as one of the 
first to use anthracite coal under boilers. 

In 1827 he built the North America, the largest 
steamboat up to that time. She had a pair of engines 44^ 
inches diameter, 8-foot stroke and 24 revolutions. She 
attained a speed of fifteen miles an hour, and used the 
now common type of return tubular boiler. 

In 1830 he became President and engineer of the 
Camden & Albany Railroad. He decided to abandon the 
wood stringers w^ith flat iron rails, and invented the now 
standard T rail, which he designed to spike by hook- 
headed spikes directly to the sleepers. He went to Eng- 
land to purchase these rails, and succeeded in doing so 
only after great perseverance in overcoming the natural 
conservatism and mechanical difficulties. He bought the 
famous '*J^hn Bull" locomotive from the 3tephensons. 
In 1832 he designed the locomotive pilot, and invented 

56 



Stevens. 

the bogie truck, forms of vestibule cars and methods of 
wood preservation. 

In 1842 Congress authorized him to construct an 
iron-clad after his designs, making an appropriation for 
that purpose of $250,000. It was to be 250 feet long, 40 
feet wide and 28 feet deep, with 700 horse power. Fre- 
quent changes in plans and specifications delayed con- 
struction. At the time of his death in 1856 the plans 
called for a boat 410 feet long, 45 feet wide, 5,000 tons 
displacement, with twin screw engines. It was to have 
only two feet free board, with four and one-half inches of 
iron armor, backed up by five feet of oak. The turret was 
to be square and immovable, enclosing depressible guns. 

Congress alternately favored and rejected the pro- 
ject until Edwin A. determined to complete at their own 
expense. It is said that the family spent millions on this 
ship. When Edwin A. died in 1868 he bequeathed the 
ship and $1,000,000 for its completion to the State of 
New Jersey. The bequest was accepted, and the work 
entrusted to General McClellan. The plans were un- 
wisely altered, the money exhausted, and disputes as to 
the ownership having arisen, the work was abandoned, 
and for years the boat lay in a grass-grown, improvised 
dock at Hoboken. In 1881 the boat was broken up and 
sold for scrap. 

The fourth son, Edwin A., inherited his father's 
commercial ability, and as early as 1820, when only twen- 
ty-five years old, was made trustee of his father's estate, 
which he managed with conspicuous success. 

In 1825 the brothers bought the Union Line of stages 
and ferry from New York to Philadelphia. It was a 
financial success until merged into the Camden & Amboy 
Railroad, of which Robert was President and Edwin 

57 



Stevens. 

Treasurer. The latter manag-ed the finances without pass- 
ing a dividend for thirty-five years. 

He took great interest in the arrangements for rail- 
road management and re])orts, so that the American sys- 
tem of railroad transportation is in large measure his cre- 
ation. 

He made elaborate experiments as to the resistance 
of iron armor to cannon shot, and determined on four 
and one-half inches to resist a sixty-four pound spherical 
shot. 

He devised many useful appliances, the Stevens plow, 
the closed fire-room for forced draft, but was rather an 
administrator than an engineer. 

At his death in 1868 he bequeathed $650,000 for the 
foundation of Stevens Institute. 

Of the three the father had the characteristics of an 
inventor — the tenacious fondness for the children of his 
own brain. 

Robert was the practical engineer, taking advantage 
of everything that came to his attention. His many in- 
ventions and improvements all tended toward simplicity 
and practicality. 

Edwin was the best financier of the three, and had his 
full part in the success of this remarkable family* 

T T T 



58 




Eli Whitney 
1765-1825 



60 



Eli Whitney. 



T T T 

While the American mechanic with all his ingenuity, 
self reliance and sensible energy, stands out clearly as a 
type, it would be difficult to designate which one among 
the many inventors and engineers was the most typical. 

Perhaps Eli Whitney comes as near as any. He was 
born in 1765 in Westboro, Mass. His father and ancestors 
were of English descent and for the times were counted to 
be well-to-do farmers. Eli's own early days were spent 
near the soil, but his mechanical tastes asserted themselves 
in spite of his inheritance and father's disapproval. As a 
lad his skill with tools became famous, and he was more 
and more kept busy with neighborhood repairs, and in- 
creasingly to his father's profit. He turned his hand to 
making and repairing chairs and furniture, violins, canes, 
nails, and other small articles of wood and of iron. His 
mechanical curiosity led him to take apart his father's 
watch, which, fortunately, he was able to put together 
again correctly. In time he made better tools for himself 
so that he was able to make excellent steel knives. With 
the breaking out of the Revolution the price of nails ad- 
vanced, and, when still in his teens, with his father's per- 
mission, he began to make nails as a regular business. 
This little business grew until he had one or two men 
working for him. With the close c^f the war the profit in 

61 



Whitney, 



nails failed and he turned to making ladies' hat-pins, 
achieving, by his artistic skill, quite a monopoly. 

His early schooling had been quite limited ; he seemed 
to have taken to mathematics rather more easily than to 
his other studies. At nineteen he set himself to obtaining 
a college education. His father discouraged the plan, 
but by dint of teaching school, and his savings from me- 
chanical pursuits, he was able to graduate from Yale in 
1792, when twenty-seven years old, having paid his own 
way through. 

To us of these more generous days, it seems rather 
hard on the boy, after having earned so much and show- 
ing such promise, that his father could not have helped 
him, at least a little. 

While teaching school he found time to work with 
tools, and at college made repairs of the scientific appara- 
tus with such precision and neatness as to astonish his 
instructors. After graduation he went South to accept a 
position as private teacher, only to find the position filled 
and himself stranded. The widow of General Greene, 
herself a Northerner, but living near Savannah, invited 
him to make her house his home, and encouraged him to 
begin at once his law studies. He was able to do her sev- 
eral favors in a mechanical way, and she. in turn, intro- 
duced him to prominent visitors to the house. One day 
the topic of conversation was the depressing condition of 
agriculture in the South, and the uselessness of raising 
much ''short staple" cotton, because of the difficulty of 
separating the seed from the fiber. (One negro could 
separate about a pound a day, although what was done 
was done in the evening, after the field and house labor 
was over for the day.) 

Mrs. Greene suggested that they give the problem to 

62 



Whitney. 



Mr. Whitney for solution. At that time he had never seen 
seed cotton, but a bunch was found, and he gave himself 
up to inventing a machine to do the work. Mrs. Greene 
gave him every assistance, and Mr. Miller, the manager 
of her estates, who afterwards married her, fitted up 
a room for his accommodation, and should have no small 
credit for inciting him to persevere in the undertaking. 

The design was soon decided upon, but the absence 
of materials delayed construction. He was obliged to 
make all his own metal parts ; even wire was not to be 
bought in the State of Georgia. In six or eight months 
the construction was so far advanced that there was no 
doubt of its success. It consisted of two parallel cylinders, 
one made up of concentric rows of sharp hook teeth, and 
the other of brushes. The teeth drag the cotton through 
a grid that is not large enough to permit the seed to pass ; 
the cotton is brushed off into one bin and the seed drops 
back into another. A two-horse power gin run by a rude 
water-wheel and attended by one man could clean 5,000 
pounds in a single day. The cleaned fiber formed only 
about one-quarter of the gross weight. It thus did the 
work of from 1,000 to 1,500 men. Mr. Miller and Mr. 
Whitney formed a partnership for its manufacture. Mr. 
Whitney, from a characteristic desire to perfect his ma- 
chine, delayed securing a patent. Of course it was impos- 
sible to keep such an event secret, and one night the build- 
ing was broken into, and the machine carried off. In this 
w^ay the invention became public property, and before Mr. 
Whitney could secure a patent there were a number of 
machines built and in operation. Mr. Whitney immed- 
iately returned to Connecticut. He made every effort to 
perfect the machine, secure a patent, and manufacture in 
sufficient quantities to meet the demand. The invention 

63 



Whitney. 



was made in 1792-3. The year 1794 was spent in secur- 
ing the patent and beginning the manufacture. Suddenly, 
in the spring of 1795, his shop, with all his machines and 
papers, was destroyed by fire, leaving him penniless, with 
a debt of $4,000 at high rates of interest. 

It was their intention at first to engage in ginning 
cotton themselves and maintain a monopoly of the busi- 
ness ; but their delay in getting machines at work, their 
hesitancy, and later on their inability to supply machines, 
almost forced others into the business, so that when he 
began to defend his patent rights he met not only the re- 
sistance of infringing makers, but the opposition of plant- 
ers also, whose gratitude naturally went to the ones who 
had most promptly supplied the machines, and at lowest 
rates. Steadily but surely, and carefully as ever, Whit- 
ney began again the manufacture of gins, but it was not 
for several years that he could supply any quantity, and 
finally he apparently gave up the manufacture entirely. 

By 1795 he began lawsuits to defend his rights, but 
it was not until 1797 that the issue of the first suit was 
announced, and, after all his exertions, it was unfavorable. 
From this time on, the vexatious lawsuits, often a score 
at a time, dragged along. Judges would often charge 
in his favor, while juries would decide against him. He 
found it well nigh impossible to collect royalties, much 
less to sell machines, in the face of general infringement. 
In 1 80 1 Whitney sold a general right to use the patent to 
the State of South Carolina, and the next year North Car- 
olina began to reimburse him by a tax on each gin. Ten- 
nessee also made a contract, which it afterward repudi- 
ated, however. But Georgia persisted in denying him any 
return. In 1807 a most important decision was given in 
his favor. It was of little avail, however, because the life 

64 



Whitney. 



of his patent had nearly expired and it had taken nearly 
all he had received from one direction to cover the ex- 
penses of litigation in another. In the course of these 
thirteen years of lawsuits, Mr. Whitney made six journeys 
by chaise to the South. His partner died in 1803, ^^d 
from henceforth he defended his rights alone with remark- 
able patience and ability. In 18 12 he made application to 
Congress for a renewal of his patent. He made a power- 
ful plea, showing the immense value of the invention to 
the nation, the large fortunes that had come to individual 
planters, and contrasted the meager returns to himself, 
which had been swallowed up in defending his patent. In 
the face of this cogent plea, Congress refused to renew the 
patent. When we consider what his invention had accom- 
plished, it seems almost incomprehensible that Congress 
should have refused the request. 

It had revolutionized the cleaning of cotton, one gin 
doing the work of a thousand men. It had revolutionized 
the agriculture of the South, and later of Egypt and India, 
by giving them in short, staple cotton, a crop that in a 
few years trebled the value of their land, paid off their 
debts, and gave employment to men, women and chil- 
dren. It increased the cotton crop in the United States 
from 2,000,000 pounds (mostly ''long staple") in 1791 to 
more than a billion pounds fifty years later. The exports 
increased from 138,000 pounds in 1792 to 860,000,000 
pounds fifty years later. It made "Cotton King" for 
nearly a century, at one time constituting seven-tenths of 
the national exports. It at once rendered valuable millions 
of acres of land along the Gulf, and quickly setled and 
added four immense states to the Federal l^iion. It 
changed the clothing of the world from wool and flax to 
cotton, and with Arkwright's spinning jetty, made Eng- 

65 



Whitney. 



land the foremost manufacturing nation of the world. 

For this inestimable gift, Whitney netted almost noth- 
ing. In his petition to Congress he said that his entire 
receipts up to 1812 had not been equal ''to the value of the 
labor saved in one hour by the machines then in use in the 
United States." Whitney became convinced, as early as 
1798, that the gin might never be a source of income to 
him, and therefore began to look about for something else. 

His invention and many litigations had brought him 
into wide acquaintance with national officials and affairs. 
At that time Congress was considering the manufacture, 
in this country, of her arms, and Mr. Whitney proposed 
to undertake the work. He was given an order for 10,000 
muskets, 4,000 to be delivered in one year, and the balance 
in two years. Mr. Whitney went at the undertaking in 
his usual thorough and systematic way. He developed a 
water-power, erected suitable and adequate buildings, con- 
sidered ways and means for a larger and better product, 
designed machinery to effect it, and trained workmen to 
skill in the new 'employment. The contract was signed 
in January, 1798, but the difficulties were greater than 
anticipated, and delayed the fulfillment of the contract. It 
was eight years, instead of two, before it was completed, 
but the progress of the enterprise, and the character of 
the product as delivered, was so satisfactory otherwise, 
that Congress treated him with the greatest consideration. 
His shops at New Haven became the Mecca of govern- 
ment officials, manufacturers, traveling notables, and for- 
eigners, and that which he could show was well worth a 
journey, for his innovations in the manufacture of arms 
were as epochal as his invention of the cotton gin. Hith- 
erto all such things, and machinery in general, had been 
made one by one, as it were or at best the main parts were 

66 



Whitney, 



made one by one. Skilled workmen would make entirely 
a single machine, or object or part; so that while the fin- 
ished products were similar, they were not exactly alike 
or interchangeable. Moreover it took a high degree of 
skill to efifect a satisfactory result, and the production was 
therefore limited. The manufactures of the world were 
on this basis. All firearms used in America at that time 
were imported from England and made after that method. 

At the time this contract was awarded to Whitney, 
similar contracts were given to others, and all failed to 
fulfill the contract. Had Whitney follow^ed this English, 
and usual method, he would doubtless have failed also, 
but his admirable judgment led him to make an entirely 
new departure. His plan was to make the parts of the 
muskets as far as possible by machinery, and so exactly 
duplicates of each other as to be interchangeable. To 
accomplish this result he planned to carry each separate 
part through its successive operations in lots of hundreds 
and thousands. 

Professor Olmstead, in speaking of him, in 1832, 
says : ''His genius impressed itself on every part of the 
manufactory, extending even to the most common tools, 
all of which received some peculiar modification, which im- 
proved them in accuracy, or efiicacy, or beauty. His ma- 
chinery for making the several parts of a musket was made 
to operate with the greatest possible degree of uniformity 
and precision. The object at which he aimed, and which 
he fully accomplished, was to make the same part of dif- 
erent guns, as the locks, for example, as nuich like each 
other as the successive impressions of a copper-plate en- 
graving.'' 

. A visit to the old shops and to the grandson of Mr. 
Whitney, failed to discover any details as to the machines 

67 



Whitney. 



with which he accomplished the results. All seem to have 
disappeared with the lapse of years and business changes. 
Hand milling machines with hard brass bearings were at 
least part of the outfit. It is to be regretted that no record 
even remains of what these machines were. 

As early as 1822 Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of 
War, admitted that Mr. Whitney's improvements were 
saving the government at her two arsenals, $25,000 per 
annum. 

The value of Mr. Whitney's services in the introduc- 
tion of the system of interchangeable parts, is appre- 
ciated the more when we recall that English muskets were 
being made by the old hand method as late as the Crimean 
War in 1858. At that time, being utterly tmable to get an 
adequate supply of arms by the old method, she asked 
Sir Joseph Whitworth, to fit out her arsenals with his 
special machine tools. 

Whitney's system not only revolutionized the manu- 
facture of muskets, but was the basis of American super- 
iority in all manufactures. It made possible the produc- 
tion of any and all machinery in enormous quantities, with 
the greatest speed and the highest precision. Think of 
muskets, revolvers, knives, shoes, gloves, screws, watches, 
knitting machines, sewing machines, typewriters, bicycles, 
agricultural machinery, and the multitudinous list of mod- 
ern necessities that are absolutely dependent for their eco- 
nomical production upon this system inaugurated by Mr. 
Whitney! Think of these things and pay tribute to his 
genius. 

Eli Whitney was a gentleman. He was large of stat- 
ure, with an attractive presence and genial, winning ways. 
His splendid mind, developed by the best education of the 
day, and varied experience, mellowed by a generous, lov- 

68 



Whitney. 



able disposition, made him calm, dignified and strong. 
Patience, steadiness, persistence were also striking char- 
acteristics. As a mechanic he was remarkably skillful and 
precise, with great resources and sound judgment. He 
was a man of business rather than an engineer. His ar- 
rangements, even of common things, were marked by sing- 
ular good taste and a prevailing principle of order. His 
mind was remarkably well disciplined. He could com- 
mand it to such a degree that there was no confused or in- 
complete thinking. Even after long interruptions he could 
resume consideration at the point where he left off, with 
no hesitancy or necessity for reconsideration of ground 
already gone over. He was perfectly able to resist the 
subtile temptation that besets inventive minds, to fritter 
away one's mental strength on a thousand and one attract- 
ive suggestions. He could hold his acute mind closely to 
the thing in hand, and that which his judgment said was 
best worth thinking about. He was far from being nar- 
row-minded, but was deeply interested in the larger ques- 
tions of government, literature, science, art and religion, 
delighting in nothing more than friendly converse with 
cultivated minds. 

Socially he had many and intimate friends. He cor- 
responded with some of his schoolmates throughout life, 
and children were invariably drawn to him by his caress- 
ing ways. He had a personal acquaintance with every 
President to the time of his death, with most of the lead- 
ing statesmen, scholars and business men of his day. But 
to none did he reveal his best gifts more freely and hap- 
pily than to his own family and workmen. He died in 
1825 after a long and severe illness, but in his deepest suf- 
fering he never failed in serenity and kindly consideration 
for others, the marks of a true gentleman. 

69 





Tliomas Blanchard 
1788-1864 
From photog7-aph oiuned by 
F. S. Blanchard, Worcester, Man. 

70 



Thomas Blanchard, 

T T T 

Thomas Blanchard started out in life under very dis- 
couraging circumstances. His father was a New Eng- 
land farmer, of Huguenot descent, who added to his in- 
come by doing blacksmith work for his neighbors. 

Thomas was born in 1788, at Sutton, Mass., the fifth 
of six sons. As a boy he was far from promising, stut- 
tering badly, and counted by some to be half foolish. He 
took little interest in farming or study, and spent his time 
whittling shingles, making windmills and miniature water 
wheels. As he grew older he became interested in iron 
work, and as his father refused him the use of his forge, 
he saved up all the charcoal he could gather and hid it be- 
hind a wall. Then he built a rude forge and used an old 
wedge driven into a log for an anvil, waited until his par- 
ents were absent and tried his hand at working iron. 

At thirteen he heard of an apple-paring machine, and 
after patient experimenting and repeated trials succeeded 
in making a machiile that would pare more apples than a 
dozen girls at the winter '' bees." 

This success deepened his inventive interest and made 
him of less use on the farm, so when eighteen his father 
sent him to work for an elder brother who made tacks 
in the neighboring town of West Millbury. Here he was 
put at the monotonous task of heading the tacks l)y hand. 
The points were first cut from strips, and then had to be 

71 



Blanchard. 

picked up by the thumb and finger, gripped in a vise, and 
headed by a blow. He was given a certain number to be 
made each day. One of the first things he made here was 
a counting machine that would ring a bell when the re- 
quired number w^as complete. His brother forbade him 
spending any time in these idle projects, but his inventive 
genius could not be suppressed. He began to consider a 
machine to cut and head the tacks at one operation. The 
idea came to him long before he had the skill or means to 
construct. For six long years he worked at the idea, ex- 
pending everything he could earn to buy materials, throw- 
ing away the old as new improvements suggested them- 
selves, carrying the models about with him from place to 
place, persisting in spite of every discouragement. He be- 
came so poor that his own brother refused to trust him for 
groceries, even when his family was actually suffering. 

At last it v/as a success ; it made much better tacks 
than could be made by hand, at the rate of five hundred a 
minute. It was sold for $5,000, which placed Blanchard 
in comfortable circumstances. The tacks were all sold, for 
some years at least to one house, who kept the source of 
supply secret and realized handsomely on the sales. 

At this time the attempt was being made by the Gov- 
ernment to manufacture its muskets in this country ; one 
of the shops making the attempt was located at Millbury. 
The barrels had been made by hand, but the process had 
been so far improved that the straight part of the barrel 
was then being turned in a lathe. There was an irregular 
enlargement at the butt where it was joined to the stock 
that still had to be finished by hand at considerable ex- 
pense. Blanchard's inventive powers becoming recog- 
nized, he was sent for and asked if he could get up a ma- 
chine that would do this. He looked the machine over 

72 



Blanchard. 

carefully and then, beginning a low monotonous whistle 
at the same time swinging one foot, he relapsed into deep 
thought. It was not long before he suggested the addition 
of a certain cam motion to the lathe that would permit 
turning the cylindrical part and the oval end at the same 
operation. 

The knowledge of this coming to the attention of the 
Government, he was sent for to introduce it at the Spring- 
field Armory. While the workmen were gathered around 
to witness its operations, one said to another, ''Well, John, 
he has spoiled your job." StilLanother exclaimed that 
''he could not spoil his, for he could not turn a gun stock." 
Blanchard overhearing the remark answered "I am not so 
sure of that, but I will think of it a while." On his way 
home soon after, the whole principle for turning irregular 
forms came to him. In a short time Blanchard had built 
a wooden model of his idea, and, sure enough, it turned 
a miniature gun stock with perfect accuracy. 

The principle is this : A pattern and block to be 
turned are fitted on a common shaft, that is so hung in a 
frame that it is adapted to vibrate toward or away from a 
second shaft that carries a guide wheel opposite and press- 
ing against the pattern, and a revolving cutter wheel of 
the same diameter opposite the block to be turned. During 
the revolution of the pattern the block is brought near to 
or away from the cutting wheel, reproducing exactly the 
form of the pattern. 

The beauty of the invention is that by varying the 
relative sizes of the guide wheel and cutting wheel, any 
variation in size relative to the model can be secured, and 
by reversing the transverse motion of the cutting wheel, 
a perfect right and left can be made frc^n the same pat- 
tern. Then by varying the transverse speed of the cut- 

7i 



Blanchard, 

ting wheel in relation to the guide wheel, the object is 
made either longer or shorter than the model. 

Blanchard immediately secured a patent and was paid 
by the Government to set one up at the Harper's Ferry 
Armory, and later at the Springfield Armory. The intro- 
duction of this machine opened up the way to others. 
Blanchard was placed in charge of stocking muskets at 
the Springfield Armory, and during the next five years 
introduced no less than thirteen machines for the better 
manufacture of muskets. The most important of these 
was a machine for making the irregular recesses in the 
stock for the barrel, lock, etc. The idea for this machine 
came to him, it is said, from watching the labors of a 
wood-boring insect. 

One of the common applications of this invention is 
the well-known die sinking machine and upright milling 
machine. The fame of these inventions spread to Eng- 
land and two committees of the British Parliament came 
to America for the sole purpose of investigating these re- 
ported inventions. The second committee left an order for 
$40,000 worth of Blanchard machinery. 

While Eli Whitney began the system of interchange- 
able parts in the manufacture of muskets, it was these 
dozen or more machines of Blanchard's that made it dos- 
sible to carry out the system in its completeness. 

Being thus occupied in Government work, opportun- 
ity was open to infringers of the patent to apply it in other 
ways. During the first term of the patent no less than 
fifty machines were put in operation for various purposes, 
turning shoe lasts, wheel spokes, tackle blocks and hat 
forms, from which he derived no benefit. The patent was 
originally granted in 1820, and was twice renewed, a 
very unusual proceeding. 

74 



Blanchard. 

One of the elder Choate's clever sayings is preserved 
with the granting of this second extension. Blanchard 
was in doubt as to his success and to help his case along 
set up his lathe in the Capitol at Washington and began 
to turn marble busts of Webster, Clay and others from 
plaster casts. After he won his case — Choate in reporting 
to his clients said, ''Oh, Blanchard, same down here and 
'turned the heads' of the members so nicely that he won 
his case.'' 

In the early history of this invention the question of 
reality of invention was contested by one of his neighbors. 
A hearing was granted, to be held on the village green. 
The neighbor, who was a brass worker by trade, presented 
a beautifully made model in brass, while Blanchard's 
model was a crude wooden affair, but the evidence was 
altogether in his favor, and little was heard afterward of 
this contestant for the honor of inventing the lathe for 
irregular forms. 

Blanchard had many troubles in defending his patent, 
and even to the end realized but a comparatively small 
amount directly from the invention. 

By this time Blanchard came to considerable repute 
as a mechanical expert, and was frequently employed 
henceforth in lawsuits and investigations in that capac- 
ity. 

In 1825 Blanchard became much interested in the 
subject of steam road wagons. While still at the Spring- 
field Armory he made a working model that was very suc- 
cessful and for which he received a patent. He had ideas 
also about rails and turnouts, but his efforts to organize a 
company or secure capital, first in Boston and later in 
New York, having failed, he apparently abandoned the 
idea. 

75 



Blanchard. 

In 1826 an effort was made to improve the navigation 
of the Connecticut river. At first steamboats were tried, 
Intt the rapids were so great that it was a failure. Then 
a canal was built around the worst rapids, and Blanchard 
was asked to design a steamboat, which he did, but it was 
also unsuccessful. This failure deepened his interest, and 
he made an elaborate study of the whole question, the re- 
sult of which was an important improvement. The im- 
provement consisted in locating the paddle wheel at a par- 
ticular distance beyond the stern, where the water set in 
with the greatest velocity. Hitherto the wheel had been 
located close up to the stern or at the sides. By Blanch- 
ard's discovery the maximum resistance to the paddles was 
secured, and a steamboat could be driven up rivers whose 
rapids had hitherto prevented steam navigation. He also 
built boats with two engines driving the wheel shaft by 
cranks set at 180 degrees on the ends, which secured the 
more constant power needed to ascend strong rapids. The 
result of his efforts was to move the head of navigation 
from Hartford to Springfield, and double the travel and 
transportation between the two places. He even navigated 
the rapids 150 miles beyond Springfield. 

Proving that small rivers could be successfully nav- 
igated by steamboats, brought Mr. Blanchard many appli- 
cations for assistance. By 1830 he had boats running on 
the Allegheny and other tributaries of the Ohio, and so 
established his method of construction that it came into 
general use. 

Another of his inventions was the process of steaming 
wood for bending. Hitherto when bent sticks were re- 
cjuired for ship construction and other purposes, the woods 
were searched for satisfactory timbers. Mr. Blanchard 
made more money by far from this invention than any 

76 



Blanchard. 

other. The U. S. Government paid him $50,000 for the 
right to use it in ship construction alone. He received the 
first year from a manufacturer of school slates over $2,000 
in royalties. It was immediately used in carriage work 
for wheel rims, and thills, for bent furniture and endles*=^ 
other purposes. 

He also made inventions in woolen machinery and 
other purposes, the details of which have been forgotten. 
In all he secured twenty-four patents. 

Although he started in life under such unfavorable 
conditions, he won out in the end. He overcame his stut- 
tering, improved his personal appearance, made up by 
observation and experience for his lack of education, and 
by his inventions changed his early poverty for compara- 
tive wealth. He was able before he died to fulfill an asser- 
tion made to the villagers of West Millbury, when in ex- 
treme poverty and youthful awkwardness he was railed 
against for his shiftlessness, that he would yet ''drive up 
through here in a coach and four." 

He died in 1864, leaving a widow, whom he had mar- 
ried only ten months before. She still survives him, 
bringing closely home to us the recentness of the origin 
of things mechanical that now seem as though they 
always had been. 

T T T 



77 




Eiias Howe 



Portrait through kindness of 

JV. S>. Heffernan, Spencer ^ Mass, 



78 



Elias Howe, 
^ ^ ^ 

Unlike many of the great inventors, Elias Howe is 
identified with only one invention, the sewing machine. 

He was born in Spencer, Mass., 1819. His father 
was a farmer, who had a small mill for grinding grain. 
The inventive faculty seems to have run in the blood, for 
one uncle, William, designed the first truss bridge erected 
in this country, the well-known Howe Truss over the 
Connecticut at Springfield; and another uncle, Tyler 
Howe, invented the spring bed. 

He was a younger son of a large family, and was set 
at work at light tasks when only six years old, setting the 
wire teeth in cotton cards ; then he helped his father in the 
mill until eleven. His only schooling was received during 
the summer term for a very few years. At eleven he was 
bound out to a neighboring farmer, but being of slight 
physique, and not at all strong, was soon released and re- 
turned to work with his father until sixteen. He seems to 
have preferred mill work to farming. 

Then he left his home to work as a machinist in 
Lowell, Cambridge and Boston. At twenty-one he was 
counted a good machinist, but rather inclined to sug- 
gest different ways of doing things than of following in- 
structions. With this disposition and his poor health he 
received small pay and irregular employment. He was 
already married, and even with the coming of children, 

79 



Howe. 

his wife found it necessary to take in sewing to eke out the 
family income. 

At one time, when working for Ari Davis in Boston, 
he overheard a conversation between his employer and an 
inventor of an unsuccessful knitting machine. Mr. Davis 
advised him to drop it, and invent a machine to do plain 
sewing. Howe overheard the remark and remembered it. 
One day when at home, sick and discouraged, he watched 
his wife sewing, far into the night, and the determination 
to invent a sewing machine took complete possession of 
him. He was well fitted for the task. He was a good 
machinist, and had been constantly employed on new spin- 
ning and weaving machines. 

At first he worked evenings, and at intervals when out 
of work, but finally gave up regular work altogether. 
Meanwhile his father had moved to Cambridge, and 
started a shop for slitting palm leaf for hats. Elias went 
to live with him. He set up a lathe in the attic, and con- 
tinued his efforts. He first tried a double ended needle, 
with an eye in the centre, and worked on it for a whole 
year before becoming convinced that it would never work, 
then he tried one device after another until the summer 
of 1844, when the idea came to him of making the eye at 
the point of a grooved needle, and locking the stitch by an- 
other thread carried by a shuttle. 

It is said that the idea came to him in a dream. He 
dreamed that he was before a king who ordered him to 
perfect his sewing machine at once, or forfeit his head. He 
dreamed that he tried and tried and failed, and that the 
savage warriors advanced to lead him to execution. Then 
he noticed that they were armed with spears, and that the 
spears had holes near their heads. This was the founda- 
tion idea of the modern sewing machine. 

80 



Howe. 

His first model was completed in October, 1844, ^^id 
although made of wood and wire, and crude to an extreme, 
would actually sew. In this model he used a curved needle 
vibrating on an arc, with the cloth to be sewn held verti- 
cally, and carried along by points on the side of a disk, that 
revolved slowly toward the needle. Its capacity was three 
hundred stitches a minute. 

While Howe had great faith in his invention he was in 
dire poverty. He only left his invention to do odd jobs 
when absolutely obliged to provide food for his family. 
To make matters worse, his father's shop burnt down, 
closing his source of aid. He thought he needed $500 to 
construct a machine. Finally an old schoolmate, named 
Fisher, a coal and wood dealer, agreed to board him and 
his family, furnish a workroom, and advance $500. Con- 
sequently Howe moved into Fisher's house, and during the 
winter of 1844-5, the sewing machine was constructed. 

It was not until late in 1845 that Howe secured his 
patent. Meanwhile he did his best to awaken interest in 
the machine. Everyone praised it, but no one would in- 
vest a dollar. He had it on exhibition in a Boston cloth- 
ing factory for two weeks. He ofifered to sew any seams 
that were brought to him and did so in one-seventh the 
ordinary time of doing the same work by hand. He offered 
to sew five seams in less time than five other seams of 
equal character could be sewn by the fastest sewers that 
could be produced and won in the trial that followed. The 
judge in his sworn statement said that Howe's work 
was the neatest and strongest. 

But fear of the journeymen's enmity and the high cost 
kept all the tailors from buying. Completely discouraged, 
Fisher withdrew from the partnership, but Howe kept 
doggedly at it. Forced bv sheer hunger, he gave it up for 

81 



Howe. 

a short time to be a locomotive engineer. His health failed 
him at this, and for want of anything else to do, he again 
sought to sell the sewing machine. Unsuccessful in this 
country, he sent his brother to England to try and sell it. 
William Thomas, a corset and umbrella maker, bought 
the machine and right to use it in his business for $1,250. 
He also hired Elias to come o\er and work for him for $15 
a week. 

There was also a verbal agreement that Thomas was 
to obtain an English patent and give Howe $15 for every 
machine built and sold in England outside of his business. 
This royalty was never after acknowledged or paid. It is 
said Thomas made over $1,000,000 from the ownership 
of this English patent. 

Elias went over, and for a few weeks worked for 
Thomas. Then he was dropped, and tried to find other 
work; then made one or two sewing machines, which 
increasing poverty forced him to pawn. Then he pawned 
his patent papers, and worked his way back to America as 
a cook on an emigrant steamer. Arriving in New York, 
he learned that his wife was dying, but was unable to go 
to her, until his father sent him a few dollars. He hast- 
ened to her, and was with her a few hours before her 
death. She who had cheerfully and loyally suffered with 
him, was denied a share in the wealth that soon was to be 
his. Following closely on this great sorrow, the news came 
of the loss at sea of all his household goods, leaving him 
absolutely penniless and in debt. 

This was the proverbial darkest hour before the dawn. 
During his absence in England, imitations of his sewing 
machine had been sold to great advantage, and the possi- 
bilities of the invention began to be appreciated. Howe's 
patent proved to be well drawn, and in the suits that fol- 

82 



Howe. 

lowed left no shadow of doubt as to his rights. Royalties 
began to flow in, and after the crucial suit against Singer 
was decided in 1854, the money value of the invention be- 
came fully apparent. In 1863, his royalties were $4,000 a 
day, and totaled, it is said, above $2,000,000. 

Judicial decisions affirmed again and again that, ''no 

successful sewing machine has ever been made 

which does not contain some of the essential devices of this 
first attempt.'' 

Another authority said that every adult since the day 
of its invention is indebted $200 for the savings due di- 
rectly to the sewing machine. 

Elias Howe was a fine looking man, with a large head 
and flowing hair. His bitter struggle with poverty through 
so many years left him reserved, quiet and charitable. 
During the Civil War, such was his patriotism that, al- 
though very wealthy, he enlisted as a private soldier in a 
Connecticut regiment, and went to the front. Then in the 
dark days that followed, he accepted the lot of a common 
soldier without complaint. When the Government funds 
ran low, and there was no money with which to pay them, 
he went without as they went without. 

One day a ragged soldier appeared at brigade head- 
quarters, and asked to see the pay-master. He waited his 
turn, and then asked if it was known when the 17th Con- 
necticut would receive their pay. He was answered rath- 
er brusquely that when the Government sent the money 
they would get their pay, and not before. He asked how 
much was due them, and wrote a draft for the amount, 
some $31,000, and received a Government receipt. In a 
few days he received his $28.60 in back pay just the same 
as the others. 

In 1867 he received the cross of the Legion of Honor 

83 



Howe. 

from France. The same year this kind hearted and be- 
nevolent man took a severe cold, from which he died 
when only forty-eight years of age. 

T T ▼ 



84 





"X^<^i 



/t^^- 



86 



John Ericsson. 



T T T 

John Ericsson was a great engineer. He was born in 
Vermland, West Central Sweden, in 1803, where his fath- 
er was an inspector of mines. His father's people were 
miners who had come to be owners and operators of small 
mines. His father was a man of refinement, well educated 
and a good matherriatician. His maternal ancestors were 
of Flemish and Scotch blood, who came into the country 
as military officers under Gustavus Adolphus. His rela- 
tives, therefore, included families of rank and wealth. 
His mother was a woman of unusual presence and ability. 
She was tall, beautiful, intellectual and of great firmness 
of character. To her was John indebted doubtless for his 
strongest characteristics. 

John had one, an older brother. Nils, who was also 
of exceptional ability, and as director of imperial railroads 
was later made Baron Ericsson. 

John was precocious and very early showed the bent 
of his later years, by insisting on making his letters after 
his own fashion and spending hours in sketching the ma- 
chinery of the mines, when other children were at play. 

1811-1814 were trying times for Sweden and many 
were ruined in business, among them this family of Erics- 
son. They sufifered severely for a time but after the father 
had secured work on the newly begun Gota Canal the for- 
tunes of the family improved. 

87 



Ericsson. 

When the father went to work on the Gota Canal, 
John was eight years old, and it was at this early age, in 
the offices of the company, that he first learned to draw to 
scale and make maps. By the time he was ten years old 
he could make accurate drawings. His father secured 
instruction for him in architectural drawing from Pohl, 
who was renowned in his day, from Lieut. Bradenburg, 
who was the most accomplished draftsman in the Mechan- 
ical Corps of the Swedish Navy, from Peritz, a German 
military engineer, and others. 

The lad's drawings were brought to the attention of 
Count Platen, the chief of the Mechanical Corps of the 
Navy, who was so impressed that the boys were made 
naval cadets and later, when only 12 and 14, were detailed 
as "canal pupils'' to the drawing office of the canal and 
John was set to work making the finished drawings for the 
archives. When thirteen he was made assistant leveler, 
and at fourteen full and only leveler at one of the stations 
and responsible for all the local calculations and records. 
The ability to fill such a position shows unusual natural 
ability and training. At seventeen he entered the Swedish 
Army. As a soldier he continued his studies of land sur- 
veying and took great interest in the mathematics of artil- 
lery. 

He was employed in drawing the maps for a military 
survey of Jemtland which were paid for by the number 
produced. He won a prize for the excellence of his work 
and was so indefatigable that for a time he was carried 
on the pay roll as two persons, so as not to awaken sus- 
picion of favoritism. Also in experimentss that resulted 
in the construction of a flame engine. With this his love 
for a military life waned and, although now a Lieutenant 
at twenty-two, secured a leave of absence and went to 

88 



Ericsson. 

England in 1826. The Crown Prince, his friend, secured 
for him a commission as Captain, which he accepted and 
at once resigned, but to the end of his Hfe cherished this 
one title, Captain in the Swedish Army. 

His flame engine did not prove successful and so he 
settled down to work in England. He became junior part- 
ner in a firm of machine builders, under the firm name of 
Braithwaite & Ericsson. In this connection he rapidly 
developed as a mechanical engineer. There followed from 
his pencil a combined gas and steam engine, a marine hot 
air engine, a pumping engine, and air compressor. 

He used this latter in 1828 to transmit power, the 
first use of compressed air for this purpose. In 1829 he 
patented a mechanical draught for marine boilers, a sur- 
face condenser, and also devised the plan of placing boil- 
ers and engines below the water line. 

This same year brought forth also his steam fire en- 
gine, the one now in universal use. 

This connection with Braithwaite put Ericsson at the 
beginnings of locomotive construction, and his ''Novelty" 
was the only one that really competed with Stevenson's 
''Rocket'' at the Rainhill trial. 

Both used steam blast, but the Novelty had also a 
mechanical draught, better springs, horizontal connection 
to cranks, was lighter and far speedier, going at the rate 
of nearly one mile a minute and 32 miles an hour. 

It was an experimental engine and built altogether 
too light for the service. After several delays owing to 
breakage and defects due to construction rather than to 
the principles involved, Ericsson withdrew the engine be- 
fore it had covered the required distance. It was char- 
acteristic of Ericsson to do this without consulting his 
partner. In spite of these accidents and withdrawal many 

89 




90 



Ericsson. 

at the time thought it to be a better engine than Stephen- 
son's Rocket. With this Ericsson appears to have dropped 
locomotive construction. 

In the years that followed inventions came from his 
prolific brain at the rate of three and four a year. A suc- 
cessful steam turbine, that he would have done well to have 
developed, a rotary engine, a process for making salt. 

In 1832 came the original use of an independent pow- 
er blower for marine boilers and a new rotary engine. 

Many of these inventions that had to do with steam 
were not very successful, but served to spur Ericsson on 
to get, if possible, a substitute, so he gave more and more 
attention to his original invention of the heat engine. 

In 1833 he patented a caloric engine that had a regen-_ 
erator in connection with it and for years he continued to 
try and make it a success, but was as continuously baffled, 
because he, like everyone else at that time, considered heat 
to be a substance instead of a form of motion. He found 
that the heat from a handful of fuel could not be used in- 
definitely, although it was not until fourteen years later 
that the true theory of heat was understood and the error 
of these gropings in the dark discovered. 

Ericsson's early caloric engine was constructed all 
right, but the expectation of its efficiency was exagger- 
ated. Other inventions were a sounding instrument, a 
motor for canal boats, a hydrostatic weighing machine, 
a machine for cutting files and a semi-rotary engine. 

Just previous to 1833 he began experiments designed 
to do away with the paddle wheels of steamers, that re- 
sulted in 1835 i^ ^he invention of the screw propeller. In 
1837 he built an engine coupled directly to the propeller 
shaft. This was a success from the start and although 

9t 



Ericsson. 

slow to be accepted in the years that immediately followed, 
in time steadily won its way to almost universal use. 

John Ericsson married in 1836 an attractive young 
lady of good family, but domestic duties hung heavy on his 
shoulders. He had no quarrel with her and always pro- 
vided liberally for her support, but his heart was with his 
inventions — not at home. Although she afterwards came 
to him at New York, she did not remain long, but soon 
returned to England where she died years later without 
ever seeing him again. 

In spite of his many inventions, perhaps because of 
their number, the firm of Braithwaite & Ericsson failed in 
1837 and for a short time Ericsson was in the poor debt- 
ors' prison. 

Before this Ericsson had become acquainted with a 
wealthy U. S. Consul named Ogden and a U. S. Naval 
officer named Stockton. With their assistance an iron 
steamer of 70 ft. length and 50 h. p. was built, and al- 
though strikingly successful, awakened no particular inter- 
est. These men appreciated Ericsson and encouraged him 
to go to America to seek the recognition that the British 
admiralty were too conservative to give. 

With this small steamer Ericsson crossed to America 
in 1839 ^^^ ^t once found interest and work. He won a 
prize for his steam fire engine, received orders for his pro- 
peller and engine on lake vessels and later, on coastwise 
steamers. He built also one of the first compound marine 
engines. At that time also began the intimate relations 
that existed for a half century between Ericsson and Del- 
ameter, the New York engine builder. 

In 1 841 Capt. Stockton secured an order from the U. 
S. Government for a 600 ton screw steamer, to be known 
as the "Princeton.'' As far as the government were con- 

92 



Ericsson. 

. cerned they had dealings with Stockton only, but the latter 
came privately to Ericsson for each drawing as it was 
needed and asked him to include any and all new ideas of 
value, which he did. The only contract he had was pri- 
vate letters from Stockton, saying that he would be paid, 
in time, not only for his services, but also for the use of 
^ his patents. Among the novel features introduced by 
Ericsson were the screw propeller, double, direct acting, 
semi-cylindrical engines placed below the water line, a 
i2-inch wrought iron, hooped gun with self-acting lock 
and friction recoil gear, telescopic funnel, mechanical 
draught and many other original devices. 

The steamer was an unqualified success, but Stock- 
ton in making his report forgot altogether to credit Erics- 
son for his part and, when the latter put in a bill for two 
years' services and expenses, refused to endorse it. The 
claim was again and again allowed by the Government, 
but was never paid, nor was anything ever given him for 
the use of his patents. 

To add to the unpleasantness Stockton had added an- 
other twelve-inch gun of his own design that burst while 
on exhibition before a large and official company. Many 
were killed and injured and the success of the steamer as 
a whole was clouded for some time. 

Stockton had omitted to credit Ericsson for his co- 
operation in the design and construction of the steamer 
but did not hesitate to blame him publicly for this disaster. 
The real facts were soon known, however, and Ericsson 
has always received the credit and honor for the Prince- 
ton's construction, if not the pay for it. 

By 1843 there were fifty steamers fitted out with 
screw propellers. The same year he 1)uilt a twin screw 

93 



Ericsson. 

steamer and little by little the propeller was adopted by 
all maritime nations. 

Some of his minor inventions at that time were instru- 
ments to measure distances at sea, hydrostatic gauge, fluid 
meter, alarm barometer, pyrometer, rotary fluid meter and 
sea lead. 

He still continued his studies as to the nature and 
application of heat as a mechanical force. He built eight 
caloric engines between 1840 and 1850 and the ninth in 
185 1 was counted a success. A ship of 2000 tons with 
caloric engines having four cylinders each of 168 and 137 
inches diameter, was built and successfully tried in nine 
months and a half from the laying of the keel, a remark- 
able illustration of the correctness of Ericsson's designs 
and of his industry and energy. ''Up to that time (1853) 
no stronger or finer ship had been built in the United 
States'' than this, the ''Ericsson.'' But it was at the 
same time a mechanical triumph and a commercial failure. 
The principle has never again been used for large units, 
but increasingly for small purposes, where economy, sim- 
plicity and safety are of more account than space and first 
cost. For this invention Ericsson received later on the 
rarely given Rumford medal. The next year, 1854, Erics- 
son designed and sent to the Emperor of the French com- 
plete plans for a turret warship. 

This was the training that Ericsson received for 
forty years previous to the outbreak of the Civil War, con- 
tinually grappling with the mechanical problems of artil- 
lery, war ships and motive power. Although an officer of 
the Swedish Army and intimately connected with marine 
construction for war purposes for thirty years, he was still 
looked upon by government officers as a civilian and, when 
he offered his services to President Lincoln for the crea- 

94 



Ericsson. 

tion of an adequate navy, he was disparaged. Neverthe- 
less, when the real pinch came and the improvised South- 
ern gunboat Merrimac was almost ready to sweep the anti- 
quated wooden gun ships from her way to the unpro- 
tected harbors of the rich North, it was Ericsson and he 
alone who was ready and able to design and construct a 
new engine of war capable of meeting and overcoming 
this new peril. So skeptical were the officials of his abil- 
ity to do this that his offer was at first declined. He was 
too proud to beg for the privilege, but at last his friends 
deceived him into believing that it had been decided to 
give him the contract, but that it was necessary first for 
him to go to Washington and explain his plans in detail. 
So he went, and learned after entering the room the real 
facts. After earnest persuasion he consented to explain 
his plans, which he did so effectively that in four hours he 
was given the order and in five short months the Monitor ^ 
was turned over to the Government. It was ordered 
September 14, keel laid October 25, steam applied Decem- 
ber 30, launched January 30, delivered to the Government 
February 19, 1862. Ericsson designed everything and 
everything was constructed under his eye — hull, turret, 
steam machinery, anchor hoist, gun carriage, everything. 
In a hundred days from the laying of the keel the engines 
were put in motion under steam. Ericsson's work during 
this time was herculean ; the slightest mistake, break, 
delay, would be ruinous. He had done what he promised 
— provided an impregnable battery, armed with the heav- 
iest gun known, hull shot-proof from stem to stern, rud- 
der, propeller and anchor protected, and of light draught. 
The battle was fought March 9, 1862, and so decisive 
was the result that it marked the passing of wooden ships 

95 



Ericsson. 

of war and the coming of heavily armed and armored, 
revolving turret, battle steamers. 

Although universal honor flowed in upon Ericsson, 
both from home and abroad, the transition was not easily 
made, but little by little it was made and fame and for- 
tune were the rewards of his genius. Bear in mind this 
transition was not from one style of ship to another, but 
was a passing from the sailor to the engineer, from hand- 
to-hand fighting subject to uncertain wind and tide, to 
nice calculations of mass efficiency, flight of projectiles, 
armor versus cannon, and the sure efifectiveness of steam 
and electricity. In all this Ericsson was the pioneer. 

During and immediately following the war he 
brought forth improvements continuously, not only in tur- 
ret armor-clads but in repeating rifles, flying artillery, 
friction recoil gear, torpedoes and engines. 

These were not isolated inventions, but were practi- 
cal improvements that were made in the course of the 
design and construction by him of scores of important 
armor-clads for difi^erent European and American govern- 
ments. As late as 1887 he was still in communication 
with the United States Navy Department, this time as 
to the value of the type of vessels favored by Secretary 
Whitney's administration. 

In steam engineering he held to the last for two cylin- 
ders, bringing their combined power to bear on a common 
crank shaft and -at right angles to each other. He believed 
in using the expansibility of steam, but disbelieved in a 
multiplicity of cylinders. 

Toward the latter end of his long life he gave much 
thought to the heat energy of the sun and methods for 
utilizing it. This brought him into controversy with the 
for'emost scientists of the day, not at all to his discredit. 

96 



Ericsson. 

During this study of twenty years he constructed 
some nine solar engines. In the earlier ones he used the 
sun's rays to heat air but found the mechanism too cum- 
bersome. A small hot air engine suggested by it has been 
immensely successful, however. 

Later on he favored using the concentrated solar rays 
to make steam, and his latest model on a very large scale 
was mechanically a conspicuous success. 

Ericsson was primarily a draftsman. For nearly 
seventy years, every day in the year, he labored over the 
drawing board, seldom less than twelve hours a day. Is 
it a wonder that the output was prodigious? His draw- 
ings were remarkably accurate to the minutest detail and 
needed only to be implicitly followed. 

In constructing novel war ships under rush orders, 
work would be begun with the first drawing and be car- 
ried on simultaneously in a dozen different shops and 
yards. 

As an inventor he was versatile and prolific, running 
ahead often of his ability to construct. His name stands 
principally for the hot air engine, the steam fire engine, 
surface condenser, the screw propeller, the turret, armored 
war vessel, the automobile torpedo and the solar engine. 

He was a notably great engineer, but his peculiar 
mental make-up, keeping him at continual odds with his 
contemporaries, prevented him from being as useful and 
as honored as otherwise would have been the case. 

As an engineer he saw things as he thought they 
ought to be, rather than as they are. He was a mechan- 
ical "seer" and therefore forever at war with the faulty 
present. He seemed to comprehend the essentials of a 
problem at once and to proceed directly to the simplest 
solution. He made constant use of mathematical com- 

97 



Ericsson. 

putations as a basis and test of his designs, and rarely 
failed to convince when he was willing to explain. 

He came to have unlimited confidence in his own 
judgment and something of contempt for that of others. 

In one of his letters he said that ''he supposed Provi- 
dence had endowed him with greater abilities than any 
other mortal." 

He was a Swede of the Swedes, tall, strong, honest 
and intensely patriotic, but a man of hasty, ungovernable 
temper, of a proud, passionate spirit that resented the 
least interference. 

Finding so few congenial associates he more and 
more withdrew himself from society and lived the life of 
an eccentric and hermit. Sticking so closely to his draw- 
ing board, year after year, never mingling w^th others, or 
keeping posted as to the work of others, he lost the advan- 
tages of criticism and comparative study and paid the 
penalty of his isolation. 

He made a great deal of money and spent it lavishly 
on his experiments, generously on his friends, sparingly 
on himself. He died in 1889, aged eighty-six years, and 
with the passing of the years his frailties are more and 
more forgiven and his genius recognized. 

T T y 



98 



LOFC. 




Peter Cooper 
1791-1883 



By the kindness of 
Dr. R. W. Raymond 



100 



Peter Cooper. 



T T T 

Peter Cooper was born in the city of New York in 
1 79 1. His ancestors on both sides were men of compara- 
tive wealth and worth. During the Revolution his father 
and maternal grandfather occupied places of rank in the 
patriot army. After the war his father made hats, suc- 
cessively in New York, Catskill and Brooklyn. Finding 
this unprofitable he sold out and bought a brewery, first 
at Peekskill and then at Newburg. 

Peter followed his father and worked with him until 
seventeen years old, when he became apprenticed to a 
coach-maker in New York. Up to this time he had had 
but a few months' schooling, but was industrious, bright, 
and eager to learn. Although he had his full share of 
boyish spirits, he had character enough to resist the 
temptation to idleness, and used every opportunity to 
increase his knowledge and skill. He fitted up a room 
as a workshop where he lived, and gained considerable 
skill as a wood-carver. He devised a machine for mor- 
tising wheel-hubs that was the first of its kind in the 
country. He also invented a tide-mill and a compressed- 
air motor for ferry-boats. During this time he received 
his acquaintance with apprentice boys, their ways and 
dangers and needs, that was the seed of which Cooper 
Union was the fruit. 

When he was twenty-one, his employer oftered to 

lOI 



Cooper. 



set him up in business as a coach-builder, but he decHned. 
Instead he went to Hampstead, Long Island, where his 
brother was, and engaged with a man who was making 
machines for shearing cloth. Here he found also the 
one who, for nearly sixty years of married life, proved 
to be an ideal wife, industrious, wise and sympathetic. 
In his old age he called her '' his guardian angel.'' 

In three years he saved enough money to buy the 
right for New York State and commenced the manu- 
facture of these shearing machines on his own account. 
It proved very successful for a time, owing to certain 
improvements that he made, until the demand for Amer- 
ican cloths died out after the War of 1812. 

The principle of this improvement was the same as 
the one now universally used in mowing-machines. He 
made a model of a machine for the latter purpose and 
used it to cut grass in his yard long before others made 
and patented similar machines. 

With the passing of the demand for his shearing- 
machines, he turned his shop into a furniture factory and 
then sold it for what he could get. 

At thirty-three he purchased a lease of property in 
Xew York, where the Bible House now stands, opposite 
the Cooper Union, and began selling groceries. Three 
years later he leased a glue factory and began making 
glue, oil, whiting, isinglass, etc. After twenty years in 
this location, he removed the business to Brooklyn, where 
it is still continued. This was the most profitable of his 
early ventures and the foundation of his fortune. His 
many contrivances improved and cheapened the product, 
while his industry and application (he was for many years 
his own superintendent, bookkeeper and salesman) built 
up the business until he had a practical monopoly of the 

102 



Coopef. 



trade in this country. Speaking of these early days he 
said, '1 was always planning and contriving, and was 
never satisfied unless I was doing something difficult, 
something that had never been done before, if possible/' 

In 1828 there was great excitement over the building 
of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Peter Cooper was 
led by two men into a land speculation. They deceived 
him as to their financial ability, and he was later obliged 
to carry the whole. He thus came into the possession of 
3,000 acres of land within the limits of Baltimore. 

To make some use of the property he erected upon a 
part of it the Canton Iron Works. The ore he dug from 
one part of the land, and the charcoal he made from wood 
on another part. In this venture he showed his char- 
acteristic audacity. He designed and built novel kilns 
of a spherical section twenty-four feet in diameter and 
hooped with iron. The venture was only partially suc- 
cessful, but it gave him an introduction to the iron busi- 
ness, with which he was ever after so largely identified. 

Within a year he sold out the iron works and deter- 
mined to sell the balance of the land for the first ofifer he 
received. The first ofifer proved to be nearly as much 
as he had paid for it. He accepted it, and took a large 
part of his pay in stock at 40. This stock began to 
advance at once, and in a short time he closed out his 
holdings at 230. 

Meanwhile the promoters of the B. & O. R. R. were 
becoming discouraged over the difficulties they encount- 
ered. At last about thirteen miles of road were con- 
structed, but the nature of the country forced them to 
make curves with radii as low as 400 feet, and grades of 
eighteen feet to the mile. English practice made 900 
feet the limit, and predicted failure for anything less. 

103 



Cooper. 



When the fortunes of the road were at their lowest 
ebb, Peter Cooper volunteered to make a locomotive that 
would successfully run the curves and haul loads. JIq 
used a small brass cylinder, of 3j4 inches bore and 14^ 
inches stroke. His boiler was 20 inches in diameter, and 
about 5 feet high, half of which was fire-box, the balance 
with two, perhaps more, vertical tubes made from musket- 
barrels. 

At first the connection to the wheels was made by a 
device patented by him in 1828 to transfer reciprocal 
motion to axial by means of an endless chain and a prod 
and a hook on the piston-rod. 

This was tried in 1829, but was not very successful, 
so Cooper substituted the usual crank motion for the 
endless chain, and employed gearing to increase the 
speed. This was tried in 1830, running the thirteen 
miles one way in 72 minutes, and the return in 57 minu- 
tes. The locomotive weighed about a ton and carried 
about four tons, including one car and forty-two per- 
sons. Anthracite coal was used, with fan draft. The 
engine developed about 1.43 horse-power, and was run 
for two or three weeks. The interest in this diminutive 
locomotive lies in the fact that it was the first actual 
locomotive used in America. It lost a contest with an 
old gray horse, drawing a load on a parallel track, but 
proved enough to revive interest in the railroad and carry 
it to ultimate success. 

During these years Mr. Cooper had been interested 
in many other things. He developed his tide-mill to 
compress air, and then to drive an endless chain two 
miles long set up on poles in the East River. His pur- 
pose was to prove the feasibility of driving canal boats in 
the Erie Canal, then building, by means of an endless 

104 



Cooper, 



chain, in the bed of the canal, to be operated by the over- 
flow and fall of water to different levels of the canal. 

His experimental chain in the East River was a suc- 
cess, and Governor Clinton, who was one of those who 
visited it, gave him $800 for the right to use the invention 
in the canal. It was never employed there, but the prin- 
ciple has been proven very successful on the Rhine and 
other European rivers. 

Another of his inventions was a marine torpedo, to 
be operated from shore by two steel wires. One was 
built, but an accident broke the wires and he abandoned 
the experiment. Another was a plan to utilize the explo- 
sive power of chloride of nitrogen in aerial navigation. 

Still another was a series of buckets, or cars, car- 
ried on an endless track up to a sand-bank on one part of 
his Baltimore property. The sand was thrown into a 
hopper placed over the moving cars, which was then car- 
ried and dumped in a valley he wanted to fill. The cars 
returned bottom-side up on the under side of the track. 
This device, which is common enough now, was quite 
novel in 1827. 

After closing out his Baltimore property, Mr. Cooper 
started a machine-shop in New York city, which he leased 
in a year to another. Then, after two years, owing to 
the failure of the lessee, he was obliged to take it on 
again. He made it over into a rolling-mill and wire fac- 
tory, and ran it for several years. Then he removed it 
to Trenton, N. J., and greatly enlarged it. 

In successive years he added to its equipment by the 
erection of the largest blast furnaces then known, at 
Phillipsburg, the purchase of the Andover mines, for 
which he built a railroad of eight miles over a rough 
country to bring ore down to his furnaces at the rate of 



Cooper. 



40,000 tons a year, and the purchase of the Ringwood 
property of 11,000 acres of coal and iron lands. This 
was formed into the Trenton Iron Company, and later 
redivided, a part going under the name of Cooper & 
Hewitt. 

Peter Cooper was fortunate in having at this time a 
son, Edward Cooper, and a son-in-law, Abram S. Hewitt, 
who were able and ready to assume the immediate charge 
of the iron w^orks, which, under their combined over- 
sight, developed for a time into the most progressive 
works in the country. There was tried the Bessemer 
process (1856) for the first time in America; there were 
rolled also (in 1854) the first iron beams for structural 
purposes ; and, later on, they were pioneers in trying the 
open-hearth furnace and the use of basic linings. 

So great were the services of Peter Cooper and 
Abram S. Hewitt in the early development of the steel 
industry of the United States that each received from the 
Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain the famous 
Bessemer gold medal. 

As early as 1850 Mr. Cooper became interested in 
the inventions of Cyrus Field, and in 1854 became presi- 
dent, which office he held for twenty years, of the New 
York, New Foundland & London Telegraph Co., organ- 
ized to lay an Atlantic cable. Through all the vicissi- 
tudes of this company Peter Cooper was the prime mover. 
His faith was unwavering, his energy persistent, and his 
credit the foundation of the ultimate success of the enter- 
l)rise. This was, in the end, i)erha])s the most profitable 
of all his undertakings, a well-merited reward for his 
faith and effort. 

As early as 1810, when Peter Cooper was an appren- 
tice in New York, he had his first desire to do something 

106 



Cooper. 



for the apprentice boys of that city. It became a fixed 
purpose in his life at that time, but did not take form until 
about 1828, when he was in the grocery business. At that 
time he had a conversation with a gentleman who had 
recently visited a polytechnic school in Paris, and who 
was enthusiastic about its advantages to working boys. 

He determined at that time to found a similar insti- 
tution for the working boys and girls of New York. To 
this end he began buying land in the block at the junction 
of Third and Fourth Avenues and Eighth Street. The 
purchases were completed about 1854, and he began the 
erection of the building. It was a large building at the 
time, of six stories, built of brick, stone and iron, and 
required several years for its completion. The building 
is notable in several respects. The great audience-room 
is in the basement ; it includes elevators, and required for 
its construction iron beams, which were rolled at his 
Trenton Iron Works, the first in this country. The land 
and building cost $630,000, and was designed to accom- 
modate, besides the great audience-room, a large reading- 
room, museum, library, a great many class-rooms and 
laboratories, and, on the street floor, stores, whose rental 
would be an income for the support of the classes. 

His object was to provide an institution where free 
instruction could be given in all practical and artistic 
branches to working boys and girls. He called it the 
Union for the Advancements of Arts and Science, his 
desire being that his gift should be only a nucleus to which 
others would add their gifts, but the Legislature, in grant- 
ing the charter, changed the name to the Cooper Union. 

From the beginning the institution had the advan- 
tage of Abram S. Hewitt's great organizing ability. Still 
it was especially the child of Peter Cooper. He visited 

107 



Cooper. 



the building daily, and as years passed by he loved noth- 
ing better than to sit on the platform evenings to enjoy 
the lectures and discussions. He would spend hours 
with the superintendent of the -building, arranging for the 
better accommodation of the increasing classes. He 
would come with visitors, great men of wealth and posi- 
tion, and after showing them the equipment and the use- 
fulness of the plant, make oportunity to urge upon them 
the duty and pleasure of every rich man doing something 
in a public way for the education and uplifting of the 
common people. 

Among the many he thus met and influenced were 
such men as Marshall Field, A. T. Stewart and Andrew 
Carnegie. The latter has publicly declared that he re- 
ceived his strongest incentive to philanthropy from the 
words and example of Peter Cooper. Mr. Carnegie has 
emphasized his indebtedness by a gift of $600,000 to the 
endowment of the Union. The children and friends of 
Mr. Cooper have added their gifts, until now the endow- 
ment, and the 3000 students require the entire building. 
The great hall has given voice for forty years to the ex- 
pression of public opinion on all the vital questions of 
the day. 

Mr. Cooper, as early as 1825, began to show an inter- 
est in civic aflfairs. The present efficient organization of 
the public schools, the fire department and water supply 
are largely the result of his untiring zeal. He was deeply 
interested during the Civil War in national aflfairs, his 
interest taking the practical form of running his iron 
works on government orders at the smallest profit. He 
loaned his money to the government freely and actively 
promoted expression of the public opinion that marked 

108 



Cooper, 



the turning point of the tide, and the second election of 
Lincoln. 

After the war he identified himself with the "green- 
back" party, and was their nomination for President of 
the United States in 1876. His stand in this regard is 
looked upon by his friends as a mistake that was to be 
explained by declining powers incident to old age, and 
his intense sympathy with the common people and their 
troubles. 

His was a noble life. At a reception given in his 
honor in 1874, when he was eighty-three years of age, he 
said: ''While I have always recognized that the object 
of business is to make money in an honorable manner, I 
have endeavored to remember that the object of life is 
to do good.'' 

Nobly and truly he lived up to this reasonable canon. 
His audacious energy never led him far astray, checked 
as it was by the soundest of good sense and the kindest 
of temperaments. He died in 1883, aged ninety-two 
years, and his almost unprecedented funeral showed but 
inadequately the loving regard of his fellow citizens. 

T T T 



109 




George H. Corliss 

1817-18SS 



Presented by 

E. AT. Hi// Eiq. 

Cor /'us Steam Engine Works 



no 



George H. Corliss. 

T ▼ T 

The name of A\'att easily takes the place of first 
importance in the history of the steam engine — and 
probably the name of George H. Corliss would, bv 
general consent, be given the second place. The import- 
ance of his inventions, and the excellence of his engineer- 
ing achievements, is remarkable when we consider how 
little his inheritance and his early associations contributed 
to that end. 

His father was a country physician — rather noted 
for his surgical skill, which probably explains the mechan.- 
ical instincts of his son George. 

George was born in 1817 at Easton, ^^^ashington 
County, New York. He had a good country school edu- 
cation, and attended an academy at Carleton, \'t., for 
a time. In after years he related that he studied the ele- 
ments of algebra while watching with a gun, for a wood- 
chuck to come out of his hole. In 1837 he was clerking in 
a country store at Greenwich, X. Y., during which time 
an indication of his mechanical and executive abilit\- 
showed itself. A spring freshet carried away the (Mily 
convenient bridge. The local builders declared it impos- 
sible to erect even a temporary bridge for weeks to come. 
Young Corliss constructed an emergency bridge in ten 
days at an expense of only fifty dollars. This country 
store was in connection with one of the early cotton factor- 
ies, and part of his work was to measure the cloth from 

HI 



Corliss. 

the mill. It was a place of considerable responsibility, 
for young Corliss apparently had the entire charge of this 
and of selling all sorts of goods ''on account/' The next 
year he opened a country store of his own, but soon tired 
of it and sold out in less than a year. 

Up to this time he had not seen the inside of a ma- 
chine shop, and had no especial interest in that direction. 
It must have been very soon after, however, that he be- 
came interested in the possibility of constructing a sewing 
machine. He invented one and secured a patent in 1842. 
This was some years before Howe secured his patent. 
Corliss' device passed needles and thread through in op- 
posite directions at the same time. To perfect this inven- 
tion and to arrange for the construction, Corliss went to 
Providence in 1844. The Company to whom he went — 
Fairbanks, Bancroft & Co. — then doing a machine and 
engine business, were not long in recognizing his talent, 
and in persuading him to drop for a time his sewing ma- 
chine, and enter their employ as a draftsman on engine 
designs. Within a year he was admitted to the firm, and 
within two years he had made the invention that revolu- 
tionized the construction of steam engines. Corliss was 
at this time, 1846, only 29 years of age. In 1848 he en- 
tered into a partnership under the name of Corliss, Night- 
ingale & Co., and this company built the first engine em- 
bodying these improvements. This company was incor- 
porated in 1856 as The Corliss Steam Engine Co. His 
original patent was dated 1849, but was re-issued in 1851 
and again in 1859. 

Hitherto all engines were controlled by a throttle 
valve that could only be varied in its operation by hand. 
As such a valve was necessarily some distance from the 
cylinder, the waste of steam was considerable, and it was 

112* 



Corliss. 

impossible to operate it quickly enough to cut off steam 
during a part of a stroke, Mr. Corliss' invention was 
the combination of a regulator with a liberating valve 
gear and sliding valves. It did away with the wasteful 
throttle valve, placed the valves close to the cylinder, auto- 
matically opening and closing them, within limits, at any 
point of the stroke, thus allowing the steam to be used 
expansively. The first one constructed was a beam en- 
gine with a diameter of 30 in., stroke of 6 ft. and indicated 
260 H. P. It had four flat slide valves, the two upper 
for supply and the two lower for exhaust. 

The transmission was by rods and toothed segments 
from a central disc operated by a crank and rod from an 
eccentric on the engine shaft. The cut-off was controlled 
by a trip operated from the governor and adjustable with- 
in limits at pleasure and automatically by the governor. 
When the catch was thrown out the valves were closed 
by weights with a dash pot to prevent excessive jar. This 
device permits the valve motion to act rapidly while open- 
ing and closing a port, and yet to move slowly in ap- 
proaching the port and after it is well opened, thus secur- 
ing ample port openings, permitting full admission and 
very slight frictional resistance. The construction of this 
engine was followed by two others of the same size and 
all were so successful that land was purchased and exten- 
sive works erected. 

The second type substituted cylindrical for flat slide 
valves, which have since been characteristic of all of the 
Corliss valve gear. They were first used on a horizontal 
engine built in 1850. 

The third type was designed in 185 1 or 1852. It 
has cylindrical valves operated by rods from the central 

113 



Corliss. 

reciprocating disc. The trips were the well known ''Crab 
Claw" and weights were used to close the valves. 

This was the type first known in Europe and was the 
starting point for all later variations. In 1858 he invented 
a fourth valve gear which was not patented, and which is 
now seen in what is known as the Harris-Corliss type. 
The difference was in the manner of tripping the cut-off 
and the working of the valve lever. 

A fifth type was exhibited for the first time at the 
Paris Exhibition of 1867. The fundamental construction 
was the same, but in detail the mechanism was entirely 
new. The most noticeable innovation was the substitu- 
tion of springs for weights in closing the valves. This 
was really patented as early as 1859 t)Ut became gener- 
ally known only after the Paris Exhibition. 

A sixth form was designed in 1874 and 1875. The 
valves were closed by atmospheric pressure, weights or 
springs being no longer used. The reciprocating disc was 
centrally placed, but the operating rods were mounted in 
pairs, using two pins, instead of four, as formerly. 

There was a seventh variation also but it was relative- 
ly unimportant, except that the disengagement was more 
exact and certain. 

In 1880 an eighth valve-gear was designed and put 
on the market. This is known as the "wrist-lever type'' 
of valve-gear. 

Mr. Corliss anticipated the demand for higher piston 
speeds and saw that this would necessitate larger port 
openings, in order to get the highest efficiency from the 
steam. To get the full benefit of the larger port openings, 
it was necessary to operate the steam and exhaust valves 
much more rapidly than in the valve-gears in general use. 
This he accomplished by his improved wrist-lever type 

114 



Corliss. 

of gear, which he designed and built in 1885 and 1886. 
This, without question, was the best and most efficient 
Corliss type of valve-gear and is still exclusively used on 
the Corliss engines built at the original Corliss Works. 

This invention of the automatic cut-off was a far 
reaching improvement. It so approved itself that the Cor- 
liss principle is seen in a majority of the steairi engines 
built since his day. It was found to be extraordinarily 
satisfactory and economical. Mr. Corliss himself had such 
faith in it from the beginning that he did not hesitate to 
accept in payment for his engines a proportion of the 
guaranteed savings in coal consumption. Some of his 
guarantees seemed wildly extravagant, but he was always 
able to do better than he promised, and usually to his 
financial advantage, 

Mr. Phillips, an old associate of Mr. Corliss, gives 
several instances of such guarantees : 

'Tn 1855 he put an engine and boilers into the James 
Steam Mill at Newburyport, Mass., the price for engine 
and boilers to be five times the amount of coal saved in 
one year. The old engines, which were 24x48 (con- 
densing developing about 180 H. P.) used on an aver- 
age for the five years preceding Mr. Corliss' contract, 
10,483 lbs. of coal per day, and were fair examples of the 
engines in use before Mr. Corliss' time. 

"The new engines were found to use but 5,690 
pounds per day, making a saving in a single year of 
$3,9*46.84, coal being reckoned at $6.00 per ton, making 
the total price paid to Corliss & Nightingale for a 180 
H. P. condensing engine and boilers, $19,734.22.'' 

"In 1856 a new engine was put into the Ocean 
Steam Mills in Newburyport, Mass., Mr. Corliss agree- 
ing to take the old engines (which previous to this were 

115 



Corli 



iss. 



considered by the owners first-class machines) and the 
saving of fuel in two and one-half years, or the sum of 
$3,000 cash. The Mill Company decided (having doubt- 
less in mind the experience of their neighbor, the James 
Steam Mill) to pay the $3,000, a wise decision, as the 
saving amounted to that in two years." 

'Tn 1852 a new engine was put into the rolling mill 
of Crocker Brothers & Co., in Taunton, Mass., guaran- 
teeing to do one-third more work than the old engine was 
doing, and when five tons of coal was used per day, but 
two tons should be used to do the same work. Forfeit 
$1.00 per pound for every pound per day used above that 
amount. Another contract which sounds hazardous but 
which shows the faith which Corliss and his partners had 
in the engine, was that made with the Washington Mills 
at Gloucester, N. J., wherein they agreed to put in an 
engine of about 200 H. P. for the sum of $7,100.00 and 
forfeit $5,000.00 for each ton per day of coal above four 
tons which should be used in driving the mill. This con- 
tract was entered into knowing that about nine tons per 
day were used with the old engines.'' 

This type of engine was particularly valuable to cot- 
ton and other mills where regularity of speed was essen- 
tial. In spinning, especially, it was necessary to have an 
even speed. If the speed increased it resulted in broken 
thread. If it decreased it resulted in diminished produc- 
tion. The control was so sluggish, with the old type of 
engines, that the engines were run at a comparatively 
slow speed, in order that they could be throttled before 
they reached so high a speed as to be disastrous. The 
Corliss engine could be safely speeded to the highest 
rate permissible, without danger of racing; so effective 
was the regulation that a variation of work from 60 H. P. 

116 



Corliss. 

to 360 H. P. within a minute did not perceptibly affect the 
speed of the engine. 

Probably the engine that brought Mr. Corliss the 
most notice was that built for the Centennial Exhibition. 
It would not be considered large in these days, but at that 
time it was counted extraordinarily large. Mr. Corliss 
was one of the original members of the Executive Com- 
mittee. He suggested that they secure a single engine to 
furnish all the power necessary for the exhibition, but 
the others thought it a too hazardous undertaking, but 
later — after being unable to make satisfactory arrange- 
ments otherwise — they accepted Mr. Corliss' proposal 
and authorized him to construct such an engine. The 
engine had two upright cylinders 3' 4%" in diameter, 
with ten feet stroke. The beam was 2"]' iV^' between 
centers and weighed twenty tons, and was suspended 30 
feet above the floor. The connecting rods were 24 feet 
long. The fly wheel was 29' 10'' in diameter, two feet 
face and had 216 teeth. The pinion was 9' 11^'' diameter 
with 'J2 teeth. The crank shaft was 18 inches in diameter. 
The cylinders were double jacketed. The entire engine 
weighed over 600 tons. They ran on 30 pounds pressure, 
•the shaft making 36 revolutions, and could develop 2800 
H. P., although they were called upon for only about 
1000 H. P. 

It was placed in the center of Machinery Hall and 
ran without a hitch from begining to end. Its starting 
and stopping marked the hours of opening and closing 
the exhibition. The engine was built in nine months and 
26 days at a very large expense to Mr. Corliss above the 
amount received from the management of the Exhibition. 
It attracted the attention of every one, not only for its 
imposing and beautiful design, but for the excellent work- 

117 



Corliss. 

manship and its silent, regular running. It seemed to 
mark the acme of all the wonderful engineering works 
gathered together from all the world. 

As time passes a larger measure of credit is given 
to Mr. Corliss for his invention than was granted by some 
of his contemporaries. For fifteen years after he began 
construction, his road was beset with legal difficulties. 
His patent was granted in 1849, and almost immediately 
he was opposed by owners of patents granted to Fred- 
erick E. Sickels in 1842 and 1845. Both sides engaged 
the best lawyers in the country, and every charge and 
counter-charge was bitterly contested. 

Mr. Sickles gained his experience in marine engine 
construction, and very unwisely limited his patented 
claims to lifting, tripping and cushioning puppet valves. 
Corliss claimed the same for slide valves. Sickels de- 
vised a water dash pot to cushion his valves. Corliss de- 
vised an air cushion to prevent the weight that closed the 
valve from slamming. 

Sickels' invention enabled him to cut oflf the steam at 
any point of the stroke, but this cut off was adjustable 
only by the hand of the engineer, and according to his 
judgment. Corliss' invention enabled him to cut off the 
steam, up to half the stroke, automatically, by the nice 
precision of the governor. 

Asa Gray, President of the American Academy, said 
to him, on presenting the Rumford Medal, ''Your engine 
embodies within itself a principle by which it appropriates 
the full, direct and expansive force of the steam and 
measures out for itself at each stroke, with the utmost 
precision, the exact quantity necessary to maintain the 
power required." 

At the time he was with Nightingale, Mr. Corliss 

118 



Corliss. 

made an unsuccessful effort to apply his principle to the 
locomotive. A reference is made to it in the story of Alex- 
ander Holly, who was a draftsman at the time, with Mr. 
Corliss. There are reasons why the principle is not ap- 
plicable to locomotive or marine engines, but for station- 
ary and pumping engines, it is the first and perhaps the 
best. 

Mr. Corliss has invented other machines, notably a 
gear cutter, and his engineering ability is seen at its best 
in the large number of heavy, special machine tools which 
he designed for use at his engine works. They are being 
used to-day and hold their own in comparison with the 
most modern. 

He built a number of large pumping engines and at 
one time engaged in a prolonged duel with the municipal 
grafters of Boston over a contract for sewage pumping 
engines. Mr. Corliss' proposition was for four engines 
having a guaranteed duty of 90,000,000 foot pounds, with 
boilers and all appurtenances, erected complete, for $180,- 
000. Instead, a contract was placed which cost the city 
of Boston some $475,000. Mr. Corliss offered a guar- 
antee of service far in excess of the favored choice, and 
to convince, offered to construct and operate at his plant, 
and at his expense, one of these engines, before pro- 
ceeding with the contract. 

In Mr. Corliss was a rare combination of conserva- 
tism with apparent venturesomeness, but his uniform suc- 
cess proved that his venturesomeness was not inconsistent 
with conservatism, but was based on knowledge and wise 
faith. 

His engineering judgment was quite remarkable, and 
was well matched by an equally sound financial sense. 
For an inventor he was singularly under self control. He 

119 



Corliss. 

would doubtless have succeeded in any line of engineer- 
ing, but having given his mind to engines, he refused to be 
drawn off to anything else. He was big enough to dis- 
cern the possibilities of his department and to develop 
it to keep pace with his own growth. 

Personally, he was always courteous, but somewhat 
reserved, and a strict disciplinarian, although genial and 
approachable to his friends and his humblest employee 
could always approach him with as much ease as any 
officer of his company and always feel assured of the 
same courteous attention. 

One of his mottoes in business was, that 'The highest 
standard of workmanship and the best materials of their 
respective kinds,'' were the only ones to be considered in 
the manufacture of his products. His sterling character 
was as much in evidence in private life as in business. 
His contributions to educational and charitable objects 
were not only most liberal, but always, in a marked de- 
gree, cheerfully given, although known only to his im- 
mediate family and the recipients. He was a devoted 
Christian in the highest sense of the term. 

There is a story told that illustrates the benevolence 
of his character : At the time the workmen began to break 
ground for the pumping works at Providence, they dis- 
turbed a nest of young birds and Mr. Corliss had them 
move to another part of the grounds for a few days until 
the young birds were able to take care of themselves. 

His clearness of mind is seen in his business corre- 
spondence, in law cases, in the brevity of his patent 
claims, and in the grasp of affairs generally. 

He was highly honored by his townsmen, engineering 
associates and scientific associations. 

He received a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 

1 20 



Corliss. 

1867 in competition with over a hundred other engine 
builders. He received the Rumford Medal from the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1870. Al- 
though not an exhibitor, he was given a Grand Diploma 
of Honor at Vienna, in 1873, because his improvements 
were seen in so many of the different engines exhibited. 
The Institute of France gave him, in 1868, the Montyon 
prize and in 1886 the King of Belgium made him an officer 
of the Order of Leopold. 

He was a state senator in 1868, 1869 and 1870 and a 
presidential elector in 1876. 

He died in 1888. 

Probably no single inventor since Watt has enhanced 
the efficiency of the steam engine as did he. When we 
consider the part that the steam engine has played in 
modern economics, this is a high distinction, indeed. 

▼ T T 



121 




Alexander Lyman Holley 
1832-1882 



122 



Alexander Lyman HoUey. 

T ▼ T 

In the memory of the engineers whose generation is 
now passing, the personaHty of Alexander Lyman Holley 
stands out in fair colors. His enthusiasm was conta- 
gious, his genial good-fellowship irresistible, and his elo- 
quence captivating. But these qualities were of but pass- 
ing value except allied, as they were in him, with those 
other qualities of intellect and character that made him 
not only singularly attractive, but exceptionally effective 
in the material development of our national life. His an- 
cestors were well-to-do Connecticut folk. His father, at 
one time Governor of the state, was a manufacturer of 
cutlery in the small village of Lakeville, in Salisbury, 
Conn. Alexander, was born there in 1832. As a boy and 
young man he was full of sports and jollity, a leader 
among his fellows in adventure and daring. He enjoyed 
school and study when it had to do with the sciences, but 
had a corresponding distaste for it when it had to do 
with languages and the classics. 

He studied successively in village school, academics, 
private tutor and Brown University. He revealed very 
early a natural talent for keen observation, with an un- 
usual ability for recording the same in writing and draw- 
ings. When missed from sight he was usually to be found 
near some steam engine or other machinery, drawing 
the parts to be sure that he thoroughly understood them. 

123 



Holl( 



T- 



Some of his sketches made when only nine years of age, 
on a visit to Niagara Falls, are still extant, and are 
creditable to the draftsman. From this time on his letters 
are filled with descriptions, sketches and comments of the 
engines and machinery that he has seen. 

He also found increased interest in writing and dis- 
cussion. At 17 he had made a list of essays that he had 
written, and was publishing one ''paper" called ''Gun- 
cotton,'' and another called "Locomotive,'' beside sending 
contributions to other journals. One of his essays, 1850, 
was an exhaustive description on the manufacture of cut- 
lery, in which he gave in detail a "description of the 
mechanical, chemical and manual operations performed 
on certain raw materials to convert them into the means, 
implements and materials for manufacturing pen and 
pocket knives." This was but the beginning of a long 
and varied list of essays, descriptions, editorials, books 
and orations, with which he filled his life to its close. 

He graduated from Brown in 1853 with honors. He 
had already passed from being an interested observer of 
steam engine construction into the ranks of the partici- 
' pants. In 1851 he invented an excellent cut-off and an 
oscillating engine, neither of which were patentable, owing 
to the broad claims of previous inventors. His gradu- 
ating oration was on "The Natural Motors," and he en- 
tered at once the employ of Corliss & Nightingale for the 
production of a locomotive. He worked as draftsman, 
machinist, and subsequently ran this trial locomotive 
until it proved to be unfit. In later years in one of his 
felicitous after-dinner orations before the A. S. M. E., 
he referred to this locomotive as being a cross between 
Mephistopheles and a Colorado mule, having an inborn 
cussedness. Strange to say, she showed excellent indica- 

124 



Holl( 



•y- 



tor cards, and he went on to sa}/ : ''Well, once in a while, 
when she had been jackassing over the road about four 
hours behind time, and we had pinched-barred her into 
the round-house, we used to pull out these indicative 
cards and talk them over right before her, and we would 
look at her and ask one another why in thunder an engine 
that could make a card like that would act as if the very 
old-chief engineer was in her. And next morning she 
would rouse up and pull the biggest train that ever had 
been over the road, ahead of time/' 

Corliss gave up making locomotives with this, and 
so Holley left, too, for his heart was in them. He trav- 
eled through the country trying to obtain employment in 
some locomotive shop, until when completely discouraged 
he was taken on at Jersey City. While working here in 
1855 he married happily. 

While at work for Corliss he had written articles for 
Colburn's Railway Advocate, and through them was 
brought to the attention of Zerah Colburn. This bril- 
liant engineer and editor was attracted to Holley, and 
from being a contributor to the Advocate he became edit- 
or and partner. In 1856 he was, sole editor and owner. 
Then for several years he threw himself heart and soul 
into journalistic work. He traveled over the country, 
became acquainted with every engineer of note, and 
every phase of railroad progress, but the paper failed. 
Then in 1857 Colburn and Holley went to Europe and 
made a careful study of European railroad practice, the 
results of which were preserved in a sumptuous folio. 
This book was not a mere description and compilation of 
data, but entered into a minute comparison of mechan- 
ical construction, an analysis of costs, and finally traced 
the British superiority of the day to the credit of a super- 

125 



Holl( 



T- 



ior road-bed. Colburn's part was probably the greater in 
this work, but Holley did much, and the work which fol- 
lowed, "Railway Practice in America/' was altogether 
his. 

Holley became now a correspondent of the N. Y. 
Times, sending in over 200 articles between 1858 and 
1863, which attracted attention and which gave the Times 
the highest position of authority on engineering topics 
which a daily newspaper ever occupied. 

In 1859 h^ made a second trip to Europe and in i860 
a third, dividing his writings between the Times and the 
American Railway Review, of which he became mechan- 
ical editor. He also secured patents for a variable cut- 
off and a rail chair. He was also mechanical editor for 
Webster's Dictionary, and assisted E. A. vStevens in loco- 
motive changes on the Camden & Amboy R. R. 

At the breaking out of the Civil War in 1861, Holley 
offered his services as an inspector of steamboats, or any 
other position where his engineering experience would 
be of service. Although endorsed by a splendid list of 
great engineers, politics lost him an appointment, and 
left him free to continue his editorial work. 

The Stevens Battery coming into prominence owing 
to the war, Holley was asked by Mr. Stevens to make an 
expert examination, and later to make a trip to Europe 
to gain information as to the best use to make of it. This 
gave Holley the opportunity to make an exhaustive study 
of everything connected with war ships, ordnance and 
armor. The results were embodied in 1864 in a large 
volume that became an authority in its department. 

Before this work appeared Holley had become inter- 
ested in another direction that was to lead him into a 
field from which he was to gather his brightest laurels. 

126 



Holl( 



1' 



He was sent to England in 1863 to investigate the Bes- 
semer process for making steel. It had been tried in an 
experimental way by Cooper & Hewett, but with them, 
as in England, the difficulties encountered had proven 
to be a serious setback to its introduction. Alexander 
Holley's keen observation recognized the inherent value 
of the process, and he secured for his clients the sole 
American license. 

He returned, was admitted to the firm of Griswold, 
Winslow & Holley, and began in 1865 the construction of 
a Bessemer steel plant at Troy, N. Y. From this time 
on his energies were largely given up to the engineering 
problems of this process. In 1867 he designed and built 
the works at Harrisburg, Pa. Then in 1868 he rebuilt 
the works at Troy. 

In the years that followed he designed the works at 
North Chicago, Joliet, and the Edgar Thompson works 
at Pittsburgh. The latter he valued as his most con-' 
spicuous success. 

Then the licensees formed themselves into an asso- 
ciation of Bessemer steel manufacturers, of which Holley 
became the consulting engineer. In this capacity the 
works at St. Louis, Cambria, Bethlehem and Scranton 
were built. Holley, more than any one else, is to be 
credited with the marvelous practical and commercial 
success of this process, and all the train of resulting 
benefits, cheap railroads, bridges and general construc- 
tion that made this the age of steel. 

Mr. Robert W. Hunt, in speaking of Holley's pre- 
eminent services in enormously increasing the produc- 
tion and cheapening the cost by the high excellence of 
his general plans, credits him with the following partic- 
ular improvements : Raised furnaces and converters, top 

127 



Holley. 

supporters, hydraulic cranes, use of three ingot cranes, 
location of converter in relation to pit and furnaces, im- 
proved ladle crane, a single operating point for all cranes, 
ladles and converter, use of cupolas instead of reverber- 
atory furnaces, an intermediate, accumulating ladle placed 
on scales, an improved ladle bottom. These were not all 
that he contributed, but were the most radical and con- 
spicuous. 

These improvements, together with the contribu- 
tions of other engineers, raised the output per unit fif- 
teen fold. The success of this invention of Bessemer 
probably had a more profound effect upon the social fab- 
ric than any other single proposition except the invention 
of the steam engine, and a large part of its practical suc- 
cess is due to Alexander Holley. Hitherto he had shown 
mainly his critical acumen ; in this he revealed equally 
great creative faculties. He received in all sixteen pat- 
ents, ten of which refer to improvements in the Bessemer 
process, the last of which, made almost on his death-bed, 
was for a removable shell for the converter, to be used 
especially for the newly introduced basic lining. 

While always loyal to the Bessemer process, his 
interest did not end there. He gave much thought also 
to the Siemens-Martin open-hearth process, and the fur- 
naces of this style built, with him as consulting engineer, 
were for some time the finest in the country. He believed 
in the Pernot furnace, the Thomas-Gilchrist patents and 
the basic lining, and had an influential part in their prac- 
tical introduction. 

With his entrance into constructive engineering- 
practice, he by no means gave up his literary labors. In 
1869 ^^ fi^'^^l hii'^'^ editor for a year of Van Nostrand's 
Eclectic, while his contributions to general magazines and 

128 



Holl( 



T- 



technical journals were continuous. His confidential re- 
ports on Bessemer practice continued for many years, 
sent only to members of the Bessemer Association, were 
said to be a mine of accurate information, and of highest 
literary merit. He collaborated on an extensive series of 
illustrated articles on American iron and steel w^orks for 
the London Engineering. 

He wrote notable articles for mechanical encyclopae- 
dias, and a steady stream of technical papers and address- 
es for the various scientific societies of which he was an 
honored member. His literary style was graphic, clear 
and often brilliant, w^hich made even his most technical 
essays interesting. 

He was a member of a government commission on 
standard tests, and of the Board of Judges of the Centen- 
nial Exhibition. 

In 1865 'le was elected a trustee of Rensselaer Poly- 
technic, and always after had a deep interest in technical 
education. In later years he delivered lectures on metal- 
lurgy and engineering subjects before the Colum- 
bia School of Mines and Stevens' Institute. He was pres- 
ident of the Institute of Mining Engineers in 1875, a vice- 
president of the Civil Engineers iri 1876, a founder of the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a member 
of the British Institute of Civil Engineers, the Iron and 
Steel Institute, and a recipient of the Bessemer gold 
medal. 

At the meetings of these scientific associations his 
genial good-fellowship, his always interesting and in- 
structive professional papers, and his capital after-dinner 
speeches, won him a most hearty welcome. 

One of the most praiseworthy results of his influence 
was the esprit dc corps that he infused into the engineer- 

129 



Holl< 



-y- 



ing profession. It was he who suggested and brought 
about the practice of uniting pleasure with business at 
the meetings of these societies, by planning for excur- 
sions to convenient points of interest, . workshops and 
engineering enterprises, and also the habit of inviting 
the wives to accompany them on these trips. No banquet 
was complete without some poem or speech from Holley. 
He had a charming presence, a pleasant voice under 
perfect control, and an always felicitous choice of words. 
His wit was genial and sparkling, leaving no sting be- 
hind, and gliding naturally and easily into the technical 
and thoughtful. 

He loved pictures, scenery and art of every kind. 
He was himself no mean architect and artist. It was he 
who designed the beautiful Charter Oak chair, now pre- 
served in the State House at Hartford. 

His habit of careful observation, trained from child- 
hood, placed him in possession of an immense fund of 
information. It was his habit, also, to make elaborate 
notes of his observations, and to preserve them in care- 
fully indexed note-books. 

He was an engineer rather than an inventor. He had 
a brilliant, versatile intellect, a genius for hard work, 
indomitable perseverence, and bouyant enthusiasm. This 
very evident ability, together with those other qualities 
of heart, his modesty, his friendly sincerity, his perfect 
willingness to give more than he received, a loving dis- 
position and a sunny temperament, bound his associates 
to him with the rarely combined bonds of admiration and 
affection. He was fairly loved by his associates. His 
fund of accurate information, his engineer's passion for 
truth, his correct judgment, together with his transparent 
sincerity and attractive personality, gave him an unusual 

130 



Holl( 



T- 



influence over men. There was no place in his great 
heart for professional jealousy. 

He was an acknowledged authority by mechanical, 
civil and mining engineers alike, and capitalists entrusted 
their millions to him in perfect confidence. 

He began life in perfect physical health, but his habit 
of intense and prolonged application told on him at last. 
As early as 1875, when only forty-three years of age, he 
began to feel the effects of the enormous strain. He was 
seriously ill in 1881, but recovered only to collapse again 
in 1882, from which he never rallied. 

Unconsciously he pictured his own end one night 
at Pittsburgh, when he had been called from a sick bed 
to respond to a gift of plate from his associates. What 
could be more beautiful and pathetic than his closing 
words on that occasion : 

''Among us all who are working hard in our noble 
profession and are keeping the fires of metallurgy aglow, 
such occasions as this should also kindle a flame of good- 
fellowship and affection w^hich will burn to the end. Burn 
to the end! — perhaps some of us should think of that, 
who are 'burning the candle at both ends.' Ah! well, 
may it so happen to us that when at last this vital spark 
is oxydized, when this combustible has put on incombus- 
tion, when this living fire flutters thin and pale at the lips, 
some kindly hand may ' turn us down,' not ' under-blown,' 
— by all means not 'over-blown' — some loving hand may 
turn us down, that we may, perhaps, be cast in a better 
mold." 

T T T 



131 




William Richard Jones 
1839-1889 



132 



William Richard Jones. 
▼ ▼ ▼ 

'The most important man in the Carnegie scheme.'' 
Such is the high praise given to William R. Jones. He 
was par excellence a captam of industry. His father was 
a clergyman, who came to this country from Wales in 
1832 and was located in Pittsburgh and Hazleton, Penn. 
William, his eldest son, was born in 1839. His father 
died when he was quite young, so that he was forced to 
begin work with a very limited schooling. 

He was apprenticed to the Crane Iron Company of 
Catasauqua when only ten years of age, first in the foun- 
dry and afterward in the machine-shop. No small part 
of his subsequent success is due to his thorough training 
in these two fundamental branches of the iron industry. 

By fifteen he was earning journeyman's wages. In 
1856 we find him at Philadelphia working as a machin- 
ist with I. P. Morris & Co., then in Clearfield County, dur- 
ing a commercial depression, as a lumberman and farm 
hand. In 1859 he is a machinist in the employ of the 
Cambria Iron Company ; three months later he goes to 
Chattanooga, Tenn., employed by a blast-furnace com- 
pany, where he remains until 1861, when, by the breaking 
out of the Civil War, he is forced to flee with his young 
bride. 

A year later he enlists in the 133d Pennsylvania Vol- 
unteers, is wounded, but rises to the rank of corporal. At 

133 



J 



ones. 



the expiration of his enlistment he returns to the Cambria 
Iron Company, but soon raises a company of men and, 
as their captain, re-enhsts in the 194th Pennsylvania Vol- 
unteers, and serves to the close of the war. The latter 
part of the time he was Provost Marshall for the city of 
Baltimore, a position requiring both tact and firmness, and 
for which service he received honorable mention. 

Then he returns again to Johnstown to be assist- 
ant to George Fritz, the chief engineer of the Cambria 
Iron Company. In this position he is busied in designing 
and constructing the famous Bessemer plant and bloom- 
mill, under the direction of two of the most brilliant of 
American mechanical engineers, Alexander L. Holley and 
George Fritz. 

Following the death of Fritz, Jones resigned from 
the service of the Cambria Company. So well had he 
done his work that Holley, who had designed the Edgar 
Thompson Steel Works at Braddock, selected him to be 
the master mechanic. Holley was at this time consulting 
engineer of the Associated Bessemer Manufacturers, and 
acquainted with all the principal steel men. He looked 
upon Jones as the best practical administrator among 
them all. 

Later Jones became the general superintendent, and 
still later, in 1888, consulting engineer to all the Carnegie 
companies. In these years he erected their great Bes- 
semer plants, the remarkable series of blast furnaces 
known as A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and the gigantic roll- 
ing mills; he met and overcame all the contingencies of 
daily operation and intense competition that culminated 
in making these establishments the finest in the world and 
a transccndcn.t financial success. 

A dozen ])atcnts stand to his credit and all have to 

134 



J 



ones. 



>do with the manufacture of steel. The first was granted 
in 1876, a device for operating Bessemer ladles, and the 
last, in 1889, considered to be the most important, a meth- 
od for mixing in receiving tanks the metal from blast 
furnaces. 

But his fame does not rest upon these few patents. 
Like all mechanical engineers engaged in the practical 
administration of affairs, he invented and devised far 
more than he patented. Invention was to him a neces- 
sary incident of daily routine. 

These vast concerns are not born full grown. En- 
gineers' plans are never perfect on first presentation. 
Errors are to be corrected, omissions supplied, inter- 
ferences adjusted, methods simplified by incessant watch- 
fulness and practical mechanical judgment. 

There is also a struggle for existence and a sur- 
vival of the fittest among steel plants as among animals. 
A comparison of daily reports, a searching of costs, the 
stimulus of competition — all compel constant improve- 
ment or defeat, and time has shown that Jones was to be 
trusted to keep the mechanical equipment of the Carnegie 
plants ahead of all competitors. 

Here were thousands of men employed, and the selec- 
tion and management of men measures, in large degree, 
the success or failure of any enterprise. 

In these things Cai)tain Jones was pre-eminent. Un- 
der his control vast forces were co-ordinated, warring- 
elements harmonized, selfish interests dominated, and the 
whole organization vitalized, until the production of a 
single blast furnace went up before his death from 350 
tons a week in 1872 to nearly 2,800 tons per week. 

One of the wires to this Carnegie system was rival- 
ry between heads of departments. Rewards were given 

T35 



Jones. 



for record outputs, these were made the standard, and 
woe betide him who fell short. 

It was competition, bitter and relentless, engender- 
ing strife and hard feeling, and yet none dared to let 
up on the terrible pace. 

Jones was not responsible for this. He was too 
high spirited to stand it himself, and when his protests 
were unheeded, he sent in his resignation again and again, 
only to be won back ; he was too valuable a man to lose. 

''You can imagine the abounding sense of freedom 
and relief when I go aboard ship and sail past Sandy 
Hook," once said Andrew Carnegie to Captain Jones. 
''My God, think of the relief to us,'' exclaimed Jones. 

When Carnegie offered him a partnership he de- 
clined, but accepted "a thundering big salary,'' $50,000 
a year, when salaries of ten were few and far between. 

When Carnegie was taken to task by some of the 
other steel manufacturers for paying such a salary, he 
responded that he would be glad to pay double if he 
knew of any more like him. 

Under Jones' management men worked as never 
before or since. His unerring mechanical judgment, his 
organizing ability, his unfailing energy, his resistless en- 
thusiasm, won their hearts, and they responded loyally 
as to a recognized and trusted master. 

In his dealings with them Jones was considerate 
and sympathetic, at the same time forceful and deter- 
mined. He attempted an eight-hour day at the Edgar 
Thompson, but when it was shown that it was falling 
slightly behind the others, it was vetoed. 

When called upon to resist extreme demands his 
opposition was open and above board, so that even in 

136 



Jones. 



the very fiercest of the conflict he retained the good 
will of his opponents. 

It was characteristic of him, at the time of the Johns- 
town flood, to take several hundred workmen from Brad- 
dock by special train. The track was destroyed ten miles 
from Johnstown, but Jones marched the men overland, 
and was the first outside assistance to reach the scene of 
destruction. Under his trained direction, they rendered 
invaluable service in the work of rescue and relief. 

He was a member of the American Institute of Min- 
ing Engineers, and, although the leading iron and steel 
expert of the country, persistently refused to accept office 
or read papers. He was also a member of the American 
Society of Mechanical Engineers, and of the British Iron 
and Steel Institute. 

He was a man of considerable property, of stalwart 
figure, and attractive face. His striking portrait shows 
a remarkable likeness to that of the greatest of Roman 
commanders, Julius Caesar, save only the eyes, which 
belonged to Jones alone, keen, alert, laughing and hon- 
est, characteristic of the real man. 

His tragic death was a striking close to such a life. 
Blast furnace C had been in trouble for several days. The 
regular organization was unable to bring it under control. 
Captain Jones assumed personal charge of affairs, and 
while directing the work an explosion occurred in the 
furnace which caused a rush of gas and molten cinder to 
fly in all directions. Several men were badly injured, and 
he was not only horribly burned, but was blown against 
an iron cinder car, fracturing his skull. He suft'ered in- 
tense agony for two days, and died September 28, 1889. 

In the resolutions ofl:ered by the managers of the 
Carnegie properties, it was said : 

137 



J 



ones. 



''We would not forget that the commander fell at the 
head of his men, at the post of duty, amid the roar of the 
vast establishment which was his work and is his 
monument/' 



▼ ▼ T 



138 




James B. Eads 
1820-1887 



Kindness of Louis Hoiv 



140 



James B. Eads. 



T T T 

In these days of gigantic enterprises, canals, bridges, 
tunnels and harbor improvements, it is strange that we 
hear nothing of ship railways, and yet that was the pro- 
posal in his mature years of one who was a master of 
construction, but who died before it could be realized. 

James B. Eads was an engineer who left behind him 
colossal works of immense usefulness to his country. His 
father and mother were both of the more refined classes 
of our great American cosmopolitanism, he from Mary- 
land, she of Irish blood. The father, however, while not 
poor, was far from prosperous, and moved first to Cincin- 
nati, and then to Louisville,^ and then to St. Louis. 

James was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, in 1820. 
He was nine years old when they floated down the Ohio 
to Louisville. It is reported that at this early age he was 
intensely interested in machinery, listening carefully to 
the engineer's explanation of his engine, and remember- 
ing so clearly that when only eleven years old he made, 
in a little workshop his father fitted up for him, a com- 
plete little engine. Besides this he made models of saw- 
mills, steamboats, and other machinery that came to his 
notice. He had slight education, but a fondness for 
reading that grew in him with the years. 

When he was thirteen, his father decided to move 
to St. Louis, and sent his wife, two daughters and James 

141 



Eads. 

on ahead, intending to follow with supplies for opening 
a shop. The boat on which they went canght fire one cold 
morning, and the passengers were landed scarcely clothed 
and with no baggage, on the very spot, it is said, where, 
years later, Eads was to plant one pier of his great bridge. 
But Mrs. Eads was not one to be discouraged. She im- 
mediately opened a boarding-house, and James did his 
best selling apples on the street and running errands. One 
of the boarders was a dry goods merchant, who, seeing 
the boy's industry, set him at work as a clerk, and per- 
mitted him the free use of his library. From these books 
he gained his first theoretic knowledge of science when 
nineteen. After five years of this indoor life, his health 
failing, he left it to be a clerk aboard a Mississippi 
steamer. 

From this time on his life was intimately connected 
with this great river. He came to know and understand 
it as none other ever did. Its vast flood unceasingly roll- 
ing on to the sea ; eating away its banks on one side only 
to pile up the sediment on the other, making bars in a 
night; eating its way through a bend to pour in torrents 
through a new channel that leaves the old miles away ; 
uprooting giant cottonwood trees and depositing them in 
the open channels, a menace to the shipping and anchor- 
age for a new bar. With all the skill of a race of born 
pilots, steamers and flat-boats were everywhere wrecked 
and left with their valuable machinery and cargoes. 

After three years as clerk, in 1842, when twenty-two, 
Eads went into business with a firm of boat-builders, his 
part being to raise these sunken boats. 

His first contract was to raise a barge-load of pig 
lead sunk 212 miles from St. Louis. A hired professional 
diver refused to descend when he saw the swift current, 

142 



Eads 

and so Eads himself went down in an improvised diving- 
bell, made out of a whiskey hogshead. For three years 
he kept at it and devised many arrangements to facilitate 
his work. He built powerful wrecking-boats, fitted with 
great pumps to draw out the sand, and derricks that 
would lift the barges by main force from the bottom. 

It was a harzardous business, but his energy and 
cleverness and boldness made a success of it. He used 
to say that there was not a stretch of fifty miles from 
Galena to the mouth but where he had walked on the 
river bottom. 

He gave it up to marry, and went into the manufac- 
ture of glass — the first factory west of Pittsburgh, but 
in two years it failed in spite of his extraordinary energy, 
and left him $25,000 in debt. 

Then he rejoined his former partners in the wreck- 
ing business, and worked harder than ever. In ten years 
his debts were paid and his firm was worth a half million 
dollars. He began to give attention to the obstructions of 
the current, and took contracts to clear the channel and 
improve harbors. 

In 1856 he went to Washington and offered to con- 
tract with the government to clear the channels of the 
Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Arkansas rivers, and to 
keep them clear for a term of years. The bill passed the 
House, but was defeated in the Senate. 

In 1857, when thirty-seven years old, he retired from 
business and m.ade his first trip to Europe. At the break- 
ing out of the Rebellion, four years later, Eads at once 
took a prominent part in Missouri and national affairs. 

When the question of the control of the Mississippi 
came up, Eads was the man of the hour. Lincoln called 
it the "key to the whole situation." At the request of the 

143 



Eads 

government Eads prepared a statement of his views 
and plans that were adopted by the Navy Department, 
but the War Department claimed jurisdiction, and subor- 
dinated Eads to an officer. At first Eads' suggestions 
were overruled, and in July, 1861, bids were asked for 
the construction of seven iron-clad river boats. Eads' 
bid was lowest in price, and quickest in time. Eads agreed 
to deliver the boats in sixty-four days. It was a time of 
turmoil and financial distress ; mills were idle, and skilled 
labor scarce. Eads, with his intense energy and con- 
siderable wealth, threw himself into the work. Machine 
shops and foundries w^ere set to work, timber was brought 
from eight dififerent states, telegraph wires to Pittsburgh 
and Cincinnati were kept busy for hours. The first iron 
plating used in war was ordered to be rolled in three 
states; in two weeks 4,000 men were at work on these 
boats, miles apart, day and night, seven days a week. 

But as usual the government delayed the work by 
altering the plans, demanding better work than originally 
intended, and delaying payments. The boats were not 
built within the sixty days, but were launched within a 
hundred days, and engaged in battle before being paid 
for. Eads began them a rich man, but was financially in- 
volved before they were finished, and Congress had ap- 
propriated their cost. These boats were 175 feet long 
and 51^ feet beam, practically flat-bottom scows, pro- 
tected on four sides by heavy oak planking slanting up 
and in. The front was also iron-clad. These were the 
first iron-clads ever in actual battle. They were very 
faulty in design, but did excellent work all through the 
war. Before they were completed Eads was authorized 
to construct another boat after his own designs for Gen- 

144 



Eads. 

eral Fremont. This was of twice the tonnage and more 
completely iron-clad. 

In 1862 Eads was authorized to build two turreted 
iron gunboats, and later the order was increased to six. 
As this was immediately after the battle of the Monitor 
and Merrimac the government insisted on using the dou- 
ble Ericsson turrets on four, but permitted Eads to use 
his own design of a single turret with guns worked by 
steam on two, on his guarantee to replace them, if unsat- 
isfactory, with Ericsson turrets at his own expense. These 
proved successful and were fired seven times faster than 
the Ericsson guns. Besides these fourteen boats, Eads 
converted seven transports and built four mortar boats. 
Captain Mahan speaks of these boats built by Captain 
Eads as the ''backbone of the river fleet throughout the 
war.'' 

At this time Captain Eads was the most important 
citizen of St. Louis. He had a beautiful residence outside 
the city, and entertained lavishly. He was a very busy 
man, now at his ship-yards, now at Washington, now at 
the front watching his boats in action. He made many in- 
ventions — new guns, and carriages, new methods of oper- 
ating turrets, applying steam to artillery, etc. He intro- 
duced his inventions not only at Washington, but to the 
German and Russian governments. He was appointed 
special agent of the Navy Department to visit European 
navy yards. But this strenuous life told on him, and be- 
fore the close of the war he had a serious collapse. 

After the war he traveled in Europe extensively, and 
in 1867 made an important address before a convention 
assembled at St. Louis to consider Mississippi river im- 
provements, and the same year a St. Louis company, of 
which Eads was chief engineer, was authorized to con- 

145 



Eads. 

struct a bridge over the Mississippi, with the ahnost un- 
heard-of spans of 500 feet — fifty feet clear above the 
river. Eads' plans were severely criticised, but generally 
as being unnecessarily strong. His plans called for two 
river piers of heavy masonry built up from rock founda- 
tion. One of these was no feet below the surface of the 
river, 90 feet of which was through mud and sand. To 
sink these massive piers Eads' genius manifested itself. 
It w^as the deepest submarine work that had ever been 
done, and called for the highest engmeering skill. From 
his fertile mind came designs of air-tight metal caissons, 
sand-pumps, air-locks and conveyors. The superstructure 
consisted of three steel arches, by far the largest ever con- 
structed up to that time. Two were 502 feet long, and 
one 520 feet. They were built out from the piers and met 
at the centre without staging below. The bridge was 
seven years in building, and stands to-day a monument to 
its builder, establishing his standing as an engineer above 
dispute. 

The next field for his talents was the question of an 
open channel to the Gulf. Eighteen feet was the deepest 
channel ever obtained up to 1875, and this was only inter- 
mittent ; a severe storm from the Gulf or high water 
from the river would undo in a single night the work of 
months of dredging and stirring. Jetties had been pro- 
posed years before, but were generally condemned as 
''difficult to build, impossible to maintain, and excessively 
costly." 

In 187s Eads came forward with an offer to construct 
jetties on one of the passes, to secure and maintain a 
twenty-eight-foot channel at a cost of less than one half 
the estimate of government engineers, on a contract which 
provided payment only in case of success. 

146 



Eads. 

To hand over the most important engineering work 
ever undertaken by the government to a private citizen, 
after a method just condemned by six out of seven of her 
ablest mihtary engineers, made Congress hesitate. But 
the open channel was highly desirable, and Eads was fin- 
ally given permission to construct his jetties on one of 
the smaller passes — to secure and maintain for twenty 
years a depth of twenty-eight feet. The small pass was 
far more difficult than the larger one that Eads desired, 
and twenty years was a long time to wait for pay, but 
Eads went at it with his usual energy. 

First of all, the work was to be financed with the 
outcome problematic and dividends twenty years away. 
Then the work was planned, organized and pushed. Af- 
ter all his plan was simple and successful. It was based 
on his belief that the amount of sediment a current would 
carry was directly proportionate to its velocity, so he nar- 
rowed the channel by jetties and the river scoured its own 
channel. 

But there were many difficulties, and Eads, as usual, 
made many devices and arrangements to further his 
work. The opposition and derision continued until one 
day an Atlantic liner appeared at the New Orleans docks 
and the jetties were saved. 

In 1879, a little over four years after they were be- 
gun, government inspectors reported a maximum depth 
of thirty-one feet and minimum of twenty-eight of the 
required width. Eads was promptly paid all except $t,- 
000,000, retained as a guarantee for their maintenance. 

The work has been wonderfully successful, and 
plainly increased the value of the whole Mississippi val- 
ley, and raised New Orleans from the eleventh to the 
second export city of the nation. 

147 



Eads. 

But this did not end his activity ; he at once set about 
urging the national government to apply the same prin- 
cipals to the entire alluvial basin. He served on the Mis- 
sissippi River Commission, but the plan proposed by him 
was too vast and costly to be adopted, and after two years 
he resigned. 

He was now sixty years old, and an authority on 
harbor and river improvements. He traveled much and 
gave much professional advice, notably as to St. Johns, 
Columbia and Sacramento rivers, and the harbors of 
Toronto, Vera Cruz, Tampico and Vicksburg. He also 
declined very flattering offers from Brazil, Turkey and 
Portugal. His two most important reports were on the 
estuary of the Mersey at Liverpool and Galveston Har- 
bor. 

The publication of the De Lesseps Interoceanic Canal 
Plans in 1879 gave Eads his opportunity to propose the 
famous ship railway across the isthmus at Tehuantepec. 
It consisted of a cradle big enough to float the largest 
ship resting on 1,500 wheels on a dozen parallel rails. His 
route was 2,000 miles shorter than the Panama and, ac- 
cording to his calculations, cheap, quickly built, safe and 
rapid, easily maintained and increased. 

The plan was declared feasible by a large array of 
engineers, but was ahead of the times and lapsed with 
his death. He gave six years of his ripest powers to this 
enterprise, and gave it up only with his life in 1887. 

In 1884 he received his highest honor, the Albert 
medal. He belonged to many societies in the United 
States and England. 

He was an engineer of extreme boldness and energy, 
self-educated, largely and exceedingly practical in all his 
ventures, and eminently successful as a business pro- 

148 



Eads. 

moter. In person he was slight, but dignified and impres- 
sive. He was notably punctilious in dress and behavior, 
which, together with his masterly powers of conversation, 
persuasion and explanation, gave him remarkable influ- 
ence over men. 

While rather severe in manner he was genial at heart, 
loved stories, hospitality, good books and chess. The 
latter game he could play blindfolded, or carry on three 
games at once. He was typical of the West, self-made, 
self-confident, bold and courageous, with enthusiastic 
energy that was almost inexhaustible. 



▼ T 



149 




Sir Richard Arkwright 
1722-1792 



150 



Richard Arkwright. 

▼ T T 

It is a long cry from Dick Arkwright, the ignorant, 
impecunious barber, to Sir Richard Arkwright, the mil- 
Honaire manufacturer, but they are one and the same. 

He was born in 1732, in Lancashire, at a time when 
the social condition of English labor was at lowest ebb. 

He is interesting to us, especially because to his gen- 
ius the world is indebted not only for the first cotton pow- 
er machinery, which was the very beginning of power 
machinery of any kind, but also for that elaborate organi- 
zation that made modern factory manufacture and busi- 
ness administration so great a success as to entirely sup- 
ersede in the course of years the primitive cottage pro- 
duction and sale. 

He was a long time getting a start. In the first place 
his parents were poor and he was the youngest of thir- 
teen children. He seems to have given up shaving in 
1760, when nearly thirty years of age, to travel about 
buying and selling hair. At about the same time he se- 
cured a secret process for dyeing hair that gave him a 
monopoly of the best business. 

Having once tasted the sweets of success from the 
possession of manufacturing secrets, patent rights and 
monopolies, he went on from one thing to another, unre- 
mittingly, to the time of his death. 

First he dabbled in perpetual motion, and in trying 

151 



Arkwright. 



to find a mechanic who could make some wheels, became 
acquainted with a clock-maker named Kay, who had 
worked with Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning 
jenny, and one Hayes, the inventor of some sort of a spin- 
ning arrangement. 

This connection turned his thoughts toward cotton 
manufacture, and was the indirect cause of much subse- 
quent trouble and vexatious litigation. His enemies 
claimed that his ideas were not original, but were stolen 
from. Hargreaves and Hayes and therefore not patent- 
able, but Arkwright claimed originality and the courts in 
the end sustained him. The whole story of his subse- 
quent inventions, incessant mental activity and tremend- 
ous energy certainly endorses his claim. 

Before his day, cotton was wholly spun by girls and 
women in their homes, at starvation wages and in unsat- 
isfactory quantities. 

Arkwright's invention was to draw the cotton 
through a double pair of rolls, the second of which re- 
volved faster than the first and to do it by water power. 

It increased the output enormously, from one spinner 
and one thread to one spinner and a score of threads, at 
greatly increased speed. 

A second gain of even more value was made, for by 
this arrangement the thread could be twisted hard and 
fine enough to serve also for warp, where before only 
wool and linen had been used. 

So great was the economy of this and other of Ark- 
wright's inventions that what one man and four chil- 
dren could now spin, before had required 600 women and 
girls. This invention was the very foundation of the 
world's gigantic cotton industry. 

Of course other men had been at work on this same 

152 



Arkwright. 



problem with varying success, and when its worth was 
estabhshed contested bitterly his claims to priority and 
forced him to defend his rights against general infringe- 
ment. 

Arkwright had to meet these difficulties and also the 
dangers that followed from the anger and fears of the 
down-trodden laborers, whose calling was threatened 
and who did again and again riotously destroy every trace 
of the new machines, lest their condition be made still 
worse. 

But his extraordinary intellect and will once aroused, 
he plunged with amazing ardor into the perfecting of his 
machinery, the defense of his patents, the construction of 
factories of unprecedented size and the general business 
administration of his multitudinous affairs. 

In 1767 he obtained his first patent. In 1771 he 
erected his first mill. Then follows a series of improve- 
ments in carding, roving and spinning that were so com- 
plicated, various, and yet so admirably adapted to the end 
in view, as to excite admiration. 

Although unused to business, he systematized his 
affairs and arranged his works so wisely that the main 
features remain unaltered to the present. His energy was 
phenomenal. He worked incessantly from five in the 
morning until nine at night. If obliged to go from place 
to place, he traveled with four horses at full speed so as 
not to" be delayed. He even separated from his wife, that 
home demands need not interfere with business. 

After he became conscious of his lack of education, 
and even late in life, he continued to give an hour a day 
to the study of grammar, and another hour to improve 
his writing, when others would have been asleep. 

After 1776 profits began to be realized, and from 

^53 



Arkwright. 



then on wealth flowed in abundantly. He was made High 
Sherifif in 1786, and knighted by George HI at consid- 
erable cost to himself. 

He was naturally very strong physically, but during 
the last years of his life suffered severely from asthma. 
He died at home in 1792, aged sixty years, worth over a 
million dollars, an immense wealth for those days. 

His most marked traits were energy, industry and 
perseverance. 

These traits combined to give him an astonishing 
power of transacting business, and raised the ignorant 
barber from poverty to rank and affluence. 

T T T 



154 



Thomas Newcomen. 

T ▼ T 

Concerning the personal history of this engineer very 
Httle is known and yet the engine which bears his name 
was the very first use of steam in a successful steam 
engine. It was so successful that it held the field almost 
without dispute for the half century preceding the epoch 
making inventions by James Watt. 

There is no record of his birth, but the house in which 
he lived was standing until comparatively recent years, on 
Lower street, Dartmouth. It was apparently a house of 
the better class and there are numerous indications of his 
respectable standing and connections. The parish church 
contains a group of memorials of his near relatives which 
all bear the mark of comparative wealth, but nothing re- 
mains to indicate the days of Thomas. 

Smiles follows the removal of the family northward 
but there the traces disappear completely. 

He was a blacksmith and ironmonger by trade and as 
such had a high standing for excellent workmanship. 
It happened that Capt. Savery, the inventor of the vacuum 
pump, lived at Modbury which was only fifteen miles dis- 
tant. He. made a great many experiments and in one 
place it is recorded that he complained of the difficulty 
he had in getting machinist labor of sufficient skill to do 
his work. This gives color to one story of the beginning 
of Newcomen's interest in the use of steam which is that 

155 



Newcomen. 

Savery had him do more or less of his work. At any rate 
the experiments of Capt. Savery were common knowl- 
edge and must have been known by such a skilled work- 
man as we know Newcomen to have been, and who lived 
only fifteen miles distant. We also know that Newcomen 
had drawings of Savery's pump and set one up in his 
garden with which to experiment, but Switzer, who was a 
friend of Savery, says that although Savery received in 
1705 the first patent for the use of steam, (it is interest- 
ing to know that this is also the first recorded patent of 
any kind) that Newcomen was fully as early in his ex- 
perimental work and failed in securing priority because 
of Savery's more intimate relations with the government. 
The Newcomen patent was granted in 1707 to three asso- 
ciates, Newcomen, Cawley and Savery. There is no 
doubt that Newcomen was the real inventor. Cawley was 
a glazier who was his assistant and Savery was included, 
it is generally accepted, because of his strenuous insist- 
ance that any use of the condensation of steam was an 
infringement of his 1705 patent. The true facts are that 
Newcomen's invention was radically different from that 
of Savery or any other single person. Papin invented the 
cylinder and piston as a means for transforming energy 
into motion. At first he used the explosive force of gun- 
powder, and later the use of the expansive force of steam 
to raise the piston, and then by removing the fire to cause 
it to fall again. He made no further use of this principle. 
Savery discovered that the sudden condensation of steam 
made a vacuum that he utilized to draw up water. His 
pumps were actually used to drain mines but were never 
satisfactory. They had to be placed within the mine to 
be drained, not over forty feet from the bottom and then 
could be used to force up water an additional height of 

156 



Newcomen, 

perhaps loo feet. Beyond this the process must be re- 
peated. It will be noticed that the water to be forced came 
into direct contact with the steam which was contained 
in a solid vessel. 

In addition tremendous pressures were necessary, as 
high as twelve hundred pounds per square inch were 
secured and with the materials for construction at hand 
frequent and disastrous explosions were the result. 

Newcomen used Papin's cylinder and piston, and 
Savery's principle of the condensation of steam to pro- 
duce a vacuum. But unlike Papin he used the expansive 
force of steam to do this work and unlike Savery he used 
a cylinder and piston actuated by alternate expansion and 
condensation of steam to transform heat into mechanical 
motion. 

Thus it is seen that Newcomen like a good engineer 
constructed his machine from the suggestions of his pre- 
decessors. At first he made a double cylinder using the 
space between for condensing water. This was not very 
satisfactory. The vacuum was secured very slowly and 
imperfectly. In 171 1 they attempted to erect an engine 
for draining a mine but failed. The next year they suc- 
ceeded in erecting it but it was slow and ineffective. To 
operate it required two men and a boy. The boy's work 
was to alternately open and close the valves to the con- 
densing water and to the boiler. One day the engine 
made two or three motions quickly and powerfully. New- 
comen immediately examined the cylinder and found a 
small hole, through which a small jet from the water 
that was on top of the piston to make it steam tight, was 
spurting into the cylinder. He appreciated the signifi- 
cance of the incident at once, dispensed with the outer 
water jacket and injected the water for condensation, 

157 



Newcomen. 

through a small pipe in the bottom of the cylinder. It 
was a success at once and increased the speed of the 
engine from eight to fifteen strokes a minute, besides 
getting the advantage of a good vacuum. 

In 1 713 a pump was erected in Leeds and the boy 
who was hired to open and shut the valves, in an effort 
to make his work easier, rigged up a contrivance of 
strings and levers that operated the valves from the mo- 
tion of the working beam overhead. This made the en- 
gine automatic and marked another stage in its evolution. 

This boy, Humphrey Potter, afterwards became a 
good workman and was sent to Hungary to erect the first 
engine set up there. This valve motion was afterward 
improved by Henry Beighton in 17 18. ^ 

This engine as it was now constructed and remained 
to be until the davs of Watt consisted of an underground 
furnace, over which was placed a semi-spherical boiler the 
flat side of which had a deep spiral groove along which 
the flame and heat passed to the chimney in which at first 
was no damper even. Immediately above the furnace was 
the cylinder, braced in place by the timbers of the build- 
ing. About twelve to thirty feet above was the cistern 
for condensing water from which descended a pipe to the 
bottom of the cylinder. Another pipe carried the water 
of condensation to the hot well. Henry Beighton also 
used this water for boiler supply. High above was the 
huge wooden working beam pivoted on the wall of the 
building*. The piston was suspended from the beam by a 
chain that was kept central by winding on an arc on the 
end of the working beam. From this beam also came 
the rod and pegs for operating the valves. From the 
other end of the working beam outside the engine house 
and directly over the pit mouth was at first another 

158 



Newcomen. 

chain, connecting to a single acting solid pump plunger. 
At first the boiler bottoms were made of copper and the 
tops of lead. Later on sheet iron was used, but not until 
1743 was cast-iron used for this purpose. The steam 
space was eight or ten times the cylinder capacity. The 
third engine to be erected was at Ansthorp. It had a 23- 
inch cylinder, 15-inch stroke, 9-inch water plunger, and 
raised the water in two lifts of 37 yards each. For this 
Newcomen was to receive $1,250 a year for which he was 
to operate and keep it in repair. In the years that fol- 
lowed the size of these engines increased until Smeaton 
erected some with cylinders of six feet in diameter. By 
the aid of these engines the mines could be sunk to twice 
th^ depth possible before, but the expense was very 
great, involving in one case $15,000 a year for coal for 
the engine. 

It was a model of one of these engines that came into 
the hands of James Watt for repairs that set his mind at 
work upon the problem and resulted in the modern high 
pressure reciprocating engine. 

Newcomen himself was a man of very great modes- 
ty and worth. He was very religious and was accustomed 
to preach in Baptist chapels wherever Sunday found him. 

No record of his death is known, but it is supposed 
that with the increase of the vexations of business com- 
petition he retired northward to private life and died 
about 1750. 

▼ ▼ ▼ 



159 




James Watt 
1736-1819 



This cut 'icas made fjom a has reliefs draivfi up 
hy hammering from a sheet of bron%e. It is 
framed in old English oak. Found in a junk 
shop in New Tork. 



160 



James Watt. 



T T T 

The name of James Watt, the inventor of the steam 
engine, is famihar to all, but even if the name is well 
known his great learning and various accomplishments 
are seldom appreciated. 

The lines of his genius run back to very worthy an- 
cestors. His grandfather was a teacher of mathematics, 
a magistrate and a church elder. His only uncle was a 
surveyor; his father a magistrate, town treasurer, ship- 
wright and merchant ; his mother a superior woman of the 
Clan Muirheid. 

James, the great engineer, was born at Greenoch, 
1736. His health was very delicate as a child, and he grew 
up ''a mother's boy." Frequent headaches prevented his 
regular attendance at school and even to the day of his 
death interfered with his work, but in spite of almost 
overwhelming obstacles, he kept steadily at his research- 
es and continually added to his attainments. Even as a 
lad he was remarked for his studious ways — and the in- 
cident is well attested of his aunt scolding him for sitting 
idly by the fire watching the steam from the kettle con- 
dense on the inside of a cup. 

When only fifteen he had studied natural philosophy, 
anatomy and made many experiments in chemistry and 
electricity. He was interested also in his father's shop, 
became quite skillful with tools— and x\\^.6.^_ and repaired 

161 



Watt. 

some of the instruments his father sold to ships. In this 
way he became acquainted with astronomical instruments, 
telescope and quadrant — and these led him to the study of 
astronomy. When eighteen he went to Glasgow, appren- 
ticed to a mathematical instrument maker, and there, 
through an uncle, who was a professor, became acquainted 
w^ith a number of college professors. Later he goes to 
London for better instruction in the art of making instru- 
ments. When twenty, in 1756, he was a skilled artisan 
and returned to Glasgow and set up a shop of his own. 
In a short time he had some troubles with his trade guild 
and his friends among the college professors made a place 
for him within the college grounds, ostensibly in order to 
make repairs on college apparatus. 

This was a very congenial place to him. He was in 
daily contact with the best educated men of the day — 
busied with the instruments and apparatus for advanced 
research. All this time he was studying and acquiring a 
broad scientific knowledge and he was soon looked up to 
even by the elder professors as an authority in scien- 
tific matters. It was during this time that his thoughts 
were turned particularly to the use of steam for mechan- 
ical purposes. Many a man before him had dreamed 
and experimented and died in poverty and discourage- 
ment, to blaze a way toward possible success. 

The French engineer, de Cans, who lived in England 
about 161 2, seems to have been the first to notice that 
heat applied to water in a containing vessel would, if a 
perpendicular tube was inserted nearly to the bottom of 
the vessel, elevate the water in it and, if the heat was 
great enough, expel the water through the tube. 

Forty years later the Marquis of Worcester noted 
a ''water commander" as one of the hundred inventions 

162 



Watt. 

that he had "perfected." He used steam to Hft water 
to a height. But after loaning above a half million dol- 
lars to his forgetful King, he was forced to die in poverty, 
avoided as an importunate visionary. 

It was twenty years later in 1683, that Sir Samuel 
Morland proposed a method for using steam as a me- 
chanical force, but his method appears to have been a rep- 
etition of de Caus' experiment. He is the first, however, 
that determined the volume of steam to be 2,000 times 
that of water. Thus far the pressure of steam was only 
used directly against the surface of water to propel a 
jet of water. In 1690 Papin, another French engineer 
living in England, made a distinctly new proposal, namely 
the insertion of a piston in the vertical tube, for the trans- 
fer of the motion to a more convenient mechanism. Papin 
was trying to perfect a lifting machine and only used 
steam to produce a vacuum, which he secured by alter- 
nately placing and withdrawing the fire under the cylin- 
der. He made no use of this invention himself, but left 
to those who came after the knowledge of two new prin- 
ciples — the use of the condensibility of steam by simple 
exposure to cold, as a moving force and a method for 
communicating the moving force of steam to bodies upon 
which it could not act directly. 

The next advance was made by Captain Savery in 
1698. It is said that he noticed one day, when he acci- 
dentally immersed his heated pipe in cold water, that the 
water immediately rose up into the tube. He applied this 
principle to raising water from a depth and thus had the 
first suction steam pump. He produced his vacuum by 
dashing cold water over the heated cylinder. 

Captain Savery was a man of great ingenuity and 

163 



Watt. 

made many improvements in his pump, but it was never 
a great success. 

In 1718 Dr. Desaguliers contrived a method for con- 
densing the steam of a Savery pump, by injecting a small 
stream of cold water into the vessel. At about this same 
time Thomas Newcomen invented the engine that bears 
his name. He used Papin's principle of a steam-produced 
vacuum under a piston, but improved upon it by condens- 
ing his steam with injected cold water as proposed by 
Desaguliers. This atmospheric engine was found to be 
immediately useful in pumping out deep mines and other 
purposes but proved to be very costly in operation. 

It was a model of this engine that came into the 
hands of Watt for repairs in 1763, that set his keen wits 
at work for its improvement. It was quite characteristic 
of Watt that in undertaking the repair of this crude 
model, he first made a careful study of the properties of 
steam. His pains were rewarded by several valuable 
discoveries and the first accurate determination of the ac- 
tion of heat on water under pressure. He came to the 
conclusion that the Newcomen engine had one prime de- 
fect, the necessity of cooling the cylinder at every stroke 
in order to condense the steam. This he avoided by mak- 
ing the condenser separate from the cylmder. It was a 
success from the start and by leaving his cylinder con- 
tinuously at 212 degrees, he not only saved three-quar- 
ters of the fuel necessary to operate, but the power was 
decidedly increased by reason of the more perfect vacu- 
um produced. 

In trying to make his piston tight enough to keep 
out air and at the same time not impede its motion. Watt 
was led to his second great invention. You will recall that 
Newcomen made no use of the expansive force of steam. 

164 



Watt. 

Watt substituted for the atmospheric pressure upon the 
piston, a second supply of steam and used above as well 
as below alternate steam and vacuum. By this contriv- 
ance Watt for the first time made use of the expansive 
force of steam as a prime mechanical power and overcame 
a second radical defect of previous engines. 

These are the main grounds upon which rest the 
fame of Watt as the inventor of the modern steam engine, 
but the improvements in detail of his finally perfected 
engine show equally the high qualities of a great engi- 
neer. The manner in which this kindly inventor was en- 
abled to make a commercial success of this invention is 
another story and is more closely connected with the life 
of Matthew Boulton, which follows. His inexhaustible 
ingenuity is seen also in the multitude of contrivances 
apart from those in connection with the steam engine. 

He was called upon to repair an organ which led him 
to a study of the theory of music — and certain of his dis- 
coveries as to the nature of musical vibrations proved to 
be correct — and made the instruments manufactured by 
him, organs, violins, flutes, to be of exceptional value. 
One organ made by him cost $10,000. He invented a 
machine for drawing in perspective. 

In 1769 he was employed by the magistrates of Glas- 
gow to survey and construct a canal nine miles long to 
provide easy access to neighboring coal fields. In this 
he proved himself to be an excellent engineer but poor 
business administrator. In the years that followed he 
was engaged in many important engineering projects, 
bridge-building, harbor improvements and canals. 

In 1770 he suggested a spiral propeller for moving 
canal boats. In 1772 he had invented a time piece, and 
a micrometer. 1774 brought forth improved quadrant and 

165 



Watt. 

Other surveying instruments. 1784 a steam tilt hammer 
was invented, a locomotive engine, and a Httle later a 
smoke consuming device. From this on his prolific in- 
ventiveness was more and more devoted to improving the 
steam engine. These two years were simply filled with 
various inventions and discoveries, especial mention being 
made of his research into the composition of water. In- 
dependently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. 
Watt was a wonderful man. He was a man of tireless 
zeal and application and to every problem he brought the 
same discriminating judgment and amazing resources. 
Probably no man of his time possessed so much, so var- 
ied, and such exact information. His knowledge was not 
at all limited to science, but covered all branches. He was 
equally learned in metaphysics, medicine, architecture, 
music, law and most of the modern languages. His re- 
markable quickness of apprehension, his unfailing mem- 
ory and ''a certain rectifying and methodizing power of 
understanding" enabled him to hold at command the 
widest information. In his extraordinary mind every con- 
ception was at once condensed into its simplest form and 
arranged in its proper place for immediate use. Per- 
sonally he was shy and reserved, but warm-hearted and 
easily afifected. He was greatly honored by the most il- 
lustrious of his contemporaries. He was a Fellow of the 
Royal Society, a Doctor of Laws and one of only eight 
foreign members of the French Institute. He died in 
1 8 19, aged 84 years. 

T T T 



166 




Matthew Boulton 
1728-1809 

This cut IV as made from a fine ivood engra'ving 
('J/4 h ^^%) h ^i^^i^f^ Sharps London^ 
180 1 y from a painting by Sir Willi am Beachley 



168 



Matthew Boulton. 



T ▼ T 



Matthew Boulton was born in Birmingham, Eng., in 
1728. His father was a successful manufacturer of artis- 
tic metal work. After a fairly good education young 
Boulton was taken into the firm when only twenty-one 
and so capable was he that in a very few years the entire 
management was given up to him. Discovering a new 
method for inlaying steel, he built up an enormous indus- 
try at Soho. It was the largest shop of its kind in the 
world, emplo}/ing above eight hundred workmen with 
sales of as high as $200,000 per year. 

They manufactured all manner of artistic iron, steel, 
brass and silver work together with scientific instruments 
and general hardware. Besides employing workers in 
metals, he had those who could work in tortoise shell, 
gems, glass, enamel and marble. He employed the very 
best artists for his designs and the most skilled artisans 
he could find. His agents were in every great city of the 
continent and from his works went the artistic adorn- 
ments of the most splendid palaces of Europe. 

As an illustration of the nicety of his art, it is said 
that he exhibited at a fair in France, a needle perfect in 
shape and finish, which, when the head was unscrewed, 
revealed within an equally perfect needle and within that 
another and another, until a half dozen exquisite needles 
were found to be neatly packed each within the size larger 



[09 



Boulton. 

than itself. In whatever he did he determined to do 
better work than was done anywhere else in the world 
and, keen as he was for commercial success, he was far 
more interested in the real worth and the artistic excel- 
lence of his product. 

In 1767 Boulton had constructed at the great Soho 
works a steam pump after the plans of Savery and had 
thus become interested in the problem of steam, and 
hearing of Watt's improvement entered into correspond- 
ence with him. Mr. Watt not having any money of 
his own with which to develop his inventions, entered 
into partnership with Dr. Roebuck, an extensive specu- 
lator in iron works and coal mines, but whose many 
venures kept him in a chronic state of financial uncer- 
tainty, so that after eight years of dissatisfaction it was 
dissolved and another arranged between Boulton and 
Watt. 

The same year, 1775, that saw the beginning of the 
American Revolution, saw also the beginning of the 
, manufacturing of steam engines by the new firm at the 
great Soho works. They obtained an extension of 
twenty-five years to the life of their patent and began 
at once an energetic effort to introduce their engine. 
They first built a pumping engine with a cylinder of 
twelve inches and set it up at Soho. This they ex- 
hibited to visitors and offered to set one up anywhere 
free of expense, for one third of the saving in coal over 
the common Newcomen type. As three-fourths of all 
the coal burned was wasted in the old engines their 
profits theoretically would have been enormous. 

This first engine proved to be, however, but the 
beginning of many troubles. Already Watt had given 
eight years' thought to it and it was six years since the 

170 



Boulton. 

patent of 1769 was granted. Their first troubles had to 
do with the mechanical difficulties of manufacture. 
There were no tools capable of machining such large 
work. Smeaton, the best mechanic of the da}^, doubted, 
on this ground alone, the success of the steam engine. 
It was a real difficulty, because the success of a recip- 
rocating steam engine is measured by the relative 
absence of friction, which is conditioned by the precision 
of manufacturer. Little by little, however, special tools 
were invented and, what was of most importance, a 
school of machinists were educated who were capable of 
working to the required standard. 

A second class of troubles had to do with the col- 
lections of royalties for the use of the new engines. Most 
of the earlier ones were set up at the mines in Cornwall 
and never paid anywhere near the agreed amount. The 
oversight of these engines and the collection of the dues 
devolved in large part upon Mr. Watt, to whom it was 
extremely distasteful. When he became thoroughly dis- 
couraged, Mr. Boulton with his tactful address would 
go and straighten the matter out. There were continuous 
law suits over collections and patent rights until 1799. 
Mr. Boulton's affairs, apart from the engine industry, 
became involved also and absorbed much of the profits 
of the engine building. But in spite of these discourag- 
ing circumstances both Boulton and Watt continually 
improved the engine, patenting successively various axial 
motions, governors, throttles and devices for using steam 
expansively. 

Little by little they won out, not only in the engine 
industry but also along other lines. Their mutual im- 
provements in coinage and coining machinery were espe- 

171 



Boulton. 

cially successful and brought them immense business, not 
only in England but in all Europe. 

These two men perfectly supplemented each other. 
Watt was a consummate engineer, of faultless judgment 
and unlimited resources, but so shy and easily discour- 
aged that he was utterly unfitted to introduce and make 
a commercial success of his inventions. 

On the contrary, while Boulton was a rare crafts- 
man himself, he was preeminently a commercial organizer 
and promoter. He was a man of exceedingly attractive 
presence and of fascinating address, which, together with 
his wealth and education, placed him on terms of inti- 
macy with kings and nobles all over Europe. 

Boulton died in 1809, aged eighty-one. Watt lived 
two years longer, and the firm was continued for years 
after by their sons. 

▼ ▼ T 



172 




William Murdock 
1754-1839 



174 



William Murdock. 

T T T 

William Murdock was for fifty years the mechani- 
cal expert for Boulton and Watt in the development and 
introduction of the steam engine. His father was a 
miller and millwright of Bellow Mills, near old Cum- 
nock, Ayrshire, Scotland, and was highly esteemed for 
his uprightness and mechanical skill. 

His son, in after years, loved to show, resting on a 
pillar on his lawn, an old cast-iron bevel gear that his 
father had made. The inscription upon it was as fol- 
lows : "This pinion was cast at Carron Iron Works by 
J. Murdock of Bellow Mills, Ayrshire, 1760, being the 
first tooth gearing ever used in mill work in Great 
Britain." 

William was born in 1754 and early showed a marked 
bent for mechanical pursuits. He had little schooling 
and secured his by no means ordinary intellectual equip- 
ment by close and patient efifort. 

In 1776 he offered himself to Boulton and Watts as 
a mechanic. He was a big, overgrown country boy with 
nothing to commend himself. Watt was away, and Boul- 
ton with no interest was sending him away, when he 
noticed a curious looking hat in his hand. He asked him 
of what it was made. The reply was, ''Of timmer wood. 
I turned it mysel', sir, on a bit lathey of my own making." 
This curiosity so aroused the interest of Mr. Boulton that 



Murdock. 

he hired Murdock on the spot for fifteen shilHngs a week 
at the shop, seventeen when away, and eighteen when 
in London. 

For fifty years he stayed with the firm and became 
their most trusted adviser in all mechanical undertakings 
of any importance. 

He was incessantly busy contriving, inventing and 
improving the product of the firm. The greatest of all 
the early difficulties of Boulton and Watt was with the 
Cornish mining captains. Watt spent much time there, 
•but without Murdock he never would have succeeded. 
Murdock worked night and day overcoming the mechani- 
cal difficulties. Once when an expensive engine had been 
installed it failed to w^ork after a little, and the angry 
miners started to mob Murdock. He was a giant in size 
and strength. He forced his way among them, went at 
the engine again and removed the difficulty. Then they 
carried him on their shoulders in gratitude instead of 
mobbing him. But greater than the mechanical difficul- 
ties was the unwillingness of the mining captains to pay 
the agreed royalty. They tried to corrupt Murdock, and 
it took all the resources of his genius to maintain the 
rights of his principals. On one occasion, at Chacewater, 
it is said, when a company wanted him to meet them and 
offered him bribes to betray his firm, he shut the door 
and actually thrashed them. He did his best to the end, 
and only left when his life was seriously threatened. His 
zeal at Cornwall quite won Watt's heart. Boulton wanted 
to send Murdock away to erect engines to Scotland and 
the continent, but Watt would not listen to it. Murdock 
was the only man he could trust at the factory. If any 
work required particular attention. Watt always directed 
that ''William" should do it. 

176 



Murdock. 

Until 1780 he only received twenty shillings a week. 
Then he asked for an increase, and Boulton shrewdly 
satisfied him with a present partly from the Cornish min- 
ers and partly from himself. Although he received no 
other advance at that time, he remained faithful. Even 
when tempted with a partnership, he refused to leave his 
old friends. In later years they treated him more gener- 
ously, and although he never became a full partner, he 
was counted the chief mechanical superintendent and 
adviser. After 1810 he received $1000 a year in lieu of 
a share in the profits. 

He was a very skillful craftsman, besides being 
quick-sighted and indefatigable. If Watt wanted an idea 
of his put into mechanical shape, no one but "William" 
could do it to his satisfaction. If anything went wrong 
with the engine anywhere, the owners soon learned that 
it was quickest put to rights if Murdock could be secured. 
He made a great many inventions and improvements to 
facilitate the manufacture of the engines, machines for 
casting, boring", turning and fitting. 

He devised a machine for turning oval forms, and 
used the endless screw and gear for boring. He invented 
the well-known cement for iron made from cast-iron chips 
and sal ammoniac, and it became an extensive product at 
Soho. 

Smiles credits Murdock with the invention of the 
famous ''sun and planet" motion for avoiding Pickard's 
patent on the crank motion. 

The patent was granted the firm for this in 1782, and 
Watt describes it as ''his sixth arrangement revised and 
executed by William Murdock." In a letter dated the 
same year Boulton attributes it to Murdock, and Parks 
reports an interview with Watt, at which Murdock was 

177 



Murdock. 

present, during which Alurdock spoke of this device as 
his, and Watt did not contradict him. 

In 1784 Murdock made a model locomotive of 
extreme simplicity that ran about the streets with no 
trouble whatever, but when Watt heard of it he wrote 
Boulton to ''gently counsel" Murdock to give it up, lest it 
withdraw his interest from their work. That it was 
developed no farther goes to prove that this also was 
Murdock's invention rather than Watt's, as is sometimes 
asserted. 

He invented in 1785 an oscillating engine. In 1799 
there was a patent granted him for an improved method 
for the construction of steam engines. It included a 
dozen suggestions, but the most noteworthy was the pro- 
posal of a D-slide valve in the place of four poppets that 
Watt used in Ins double engines. Murdock was more 
than an excellent craftsman, however. He had some- 
thing of Watt's habit of mind, and w^as constantly think- 
ing and studying over mechanical and scientific questions. 

As early as 1792 he began a study of dififerent 
inflammable gases. His interest began from assisting 
Boulton in some of his chemical experiments, and his 
studies were carried on almost wholly in the night. He 
experimented with various substances — peat, wood, other 
substances, and coal of various kinds. He used an iron 
retort, and copper tubes of considerable length. He 
burned the gas at apertures of various shapes and sizes, 
and remarked the value of washing the gas in water. 
In 1794 he spoke about a patent on gas for illuminating 
purposes, but Boulton and Watt were too busy to attend 
to it, although later they expended large sums in the 
manufacture of gas producing machinery. 

In t8o2, to celebrate the peace of Amiens, Murdock 

178 



Murdock. 

lighted by gas the whole front of the Soho works. This 
striking illustration of the usefulness of gas led Boulton 
and Watt to light their factory by this means. Other 
firms followed, and by 1805 g^s came into general use. 

In 1808 he read his famous paper on illuminating 
gas before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was 
awarded the Rumford gold medal. 

In 1809 he discovered a method of refining porter 
by the use of fish skins in place of costly isinglass. That 
was very successful and profitable. In 1810 came his 
patent for boring stone. 

It was a pet scheme of his also to use compressed 
air as a source of power. He used it to drive an engine, 
operate a hoist, and suggested the transmission of letters 
and parcels in tubes by exhausting the air, and experi- 
ments of his led his pupil, Samuel Clegg, to the project 
of the atmospheric railway. 

Mr. Fairbairn tells of his pulverizing peat, com- 
pressing it into form and then polishing it into a beauti- 
ful jet black. 

It was a whimsical suggestion of his, also, that the 
streets of London be made into a huge tread-mill, so that 
the energy of the walking multitude might be stored for 
useful purposes. 

In 1824 Mr. Charles Dupin gives an account of the 
great meeting called to erect a monument to the memory 
of Watt, and records that reverence was made to the 
most interesting man present, a venerable man whose 
services should also be rewarded by some mark of public 
gratitude, and at the mention of the name, William Mur- 
dock, the great audience rose at once to honor him. 

In 1830 he withdrew from active work and lived 
quietly near Soho until he died in 1839, aged eighty-five 

179 



Murdock. 

years. He was buried in the same church near Boulton 
and Watt, and a fine bust by Chantry marks the spot. 
There is also an excellent oil portrait in the hall of the 
Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which he was a member. 

William Murdock added to his mechanical sense a 
scientific mind, modest, unambitious ways, and a zealous 
friendship that made men love and respect him. 

In nobility of character as in stature, he towered 
above his fellow men. 

T T T 



1 80 




William Symington 
1764-1831 



T82 



William Symington. 

▼ TV 

Another of the unfortunate engineers whose work 
was of real value in hastening the coming of practical 
steam engines was William Symington. 

He was born at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, in 1764. His 
father was a miller by trade, who was in charge of the 
machinery at the mines of the Lead Mining Co., of Wan- 
lockhead. This company had a Boulton & Watt pump- 
ing engine. William was carefully trained by his father 
in the company work shops and early gave evidence of 
mechanical ability. 

He also had careful schooling which culminated in 
attendance at some of the lectures at Glasgow and Edin- 
burgh Universities, Some writers say it was the inten- 
tion that he should become a minister. Be that as it may, 
we know that at twenty-one he had constructed with his 
father's aid a model of a steam carriage that ran success- 
fully about the streets of the village. It aroused great 
interest. Mr. Meason, the manager of the lead mines, 
exhibited it at his house, helped with the expenses, and 
finally sent William with it to Edinburgh with letters 
to some of the professors at the university. 

James Watt heard about it and wrote to the young 
inventor as follows : 'The sole privilege of making steam 
engines by elastic force of steam acting on a piston, with 
or without condensation, had been granted to Mr. Watt, 

T?3 



Symington. 

and also that, among other improvements, he had par- 
ticularly specified the application of the steam engine for 
drawing a wheeled carriage, in a patent which was taken 
out in 1784." Evidently this threatening letter did not 
frighten Symington, for in 1787 he took out a patent for 
an improved steam engine in which he secured rotary 
motion by means of chain and ratchets. 

Meason helped him build one of the same size as the 
Watt engine at the mines, and the two ran side by side 
under the same conditions, doing, it is said, one-fifth more 
work than Watt's engine. 

At this time Symington came to the notice of Patrick 
Miller, a retired banker at Edinburgh. 

Miller was a large owner of the Carron Iron Works, 
a man much interested in inventions and improvements 
of guns and warships. One of his schemes was to make 
a warship of two or three hulls covered by a single deck, 
with room between them for paddle-wheels, that were to 
be operated by sailors moving about a capstan. Such a 
ship was built, but the work was found to be too severe 
for continuous effort. James Taylor, a tutor in Miller's 
family, suggested a steam engine, and Miller finally gave 
him permission to find an engineer who could develop the 
plan. 

Taylor introduced Symington and together they con- 
structed a fine engine and boiler, and mounted them on a 
pleasure boat. The engine was constructed after the 
design of the 1787 patent, with brass cylinders four 
inches in diameter ; the paddle-wheel was between the 
two hulls and was rotated by means of chains and 
ratchets. The boat was tried in 1788 on Dalswinton Loch 
in the park of Mr. Miller. 

Aboard the boat were Mr. Miller, Symington, Rob- 

184 



Symington. 

ert Burns, the poet; Alexander Nasmyth, the artist father 
of James Nasmyth, the inventor who afterwards painted 
the picture of the boat that is given with this story. Also 
on the bank was Sir William A'lonteith, a future prime 
minister of England. Nasmyth describes the boat as 
being 25 feet long and 7 feet beam, made of tinned sheet 
iron. It was therefore, besides being the first steamboat, 
the first iron ship ! 

The boat ran four or five miles easily and was so 
much a success that Miller ordered the construction of a 
larger boat. Symington designed an engine with 18-inch 
cylinders, and the Carron Iron Works built it. It made 
seven miles an hour. Miller lost confidence in Syming- 
ton's chain and ratchet gear and went to Watt for assist- 
ance, who took no interest in the proposal, and so the 
boat was dismantled and the matter was dropped. 

We hear no more of Symington for twelve years. 

In 1 80 1 Lord Dundas, the governor of the Forth & 
Clyde Canal Co., became interested in experiments for 
driving canal boats by power. He heard of Symington 
and employed him to design an engine. 

Symington discarded his 1787 patent and took out a 
new one in 1801. This engine was a ten-horse power, 
lying horizontal on the deck. The piston rod was guided 
by rollers and was connected directly to the paddle- 
wheel shaft by a crank and connecting rod, exactly the 
way that has been universally followed since. 

The engine was fitted to a tugboat called the Char- 
lotte Dundas, 56 feet long, 18 feet beam, 8 feet deep. 
It had a hole 4 feet wide and 12 feet long in the stern in 
which the paddle was placed. The entire cost was 
£36 IDS. lod. 

This boat was tried in 1802 on the Clyde Canal and 

185 




Designed and built by William Symington 



The original of this •zvas a painting 
by Alexander Naimyth, ivbo 
ivas one of the guests on its 
trial trip. He ivas the father 
of James Nasmyth^ the in'ven 
or of the steam hammer. 



1 S(> 



Symington. 



ran from Lock 20 to Port Dundas, igy^ miles, in six 
hours. It was done in the face of head winds that drove 
all other boats to shelter, and, besides, towed two heavy 
barges. 

It was guided by two rudders connected by an iron 
rod and placed on either side of the prow. 

The experiment was counted a great success, and 
entitles Symington to great credit for designing and con- 
structing the first practical steamboat on the lines that 
have since been followed. Fitch, the American, preceded 
him in the invention of the first steamboat, but that used 
oars and crude devices that were never reproduced. 

Symington's fame seemed assured, but the governors 
of the canal company decided not to use steamboats on 
the canal from fear that the waves would wash the 
banks. 

But the Duke of Bridgewater ordered him to con- 
struct eight for use on his canal. Just as he was ready 
to begin the Duke of Bridgewater died and Symington 
found himself friendless. His 1801 patent was found to 
be limited, and others by slight changes reaped the bene- 
fit that belonged to his genius. 

Symington worked for a time for the Callinder Coal 
Co. and then drifted to London a disappointed and dis- 
couraged man. He did nothing more with the steam- 
boat. It has been claimed and denied that Fulton was 
aboard the Charlotte Dundas, took up its design and with 
the aid of Fitch's drawings, Livingston's money and his 
own very great mechanical judgment, was able to con- 
struct the steamboat that survived. 

Bell was another who observed Symington's work, 
and ten years later built the first commercially successful 
passenger steamer in England. 

187 . 



Symington. 



Symington lived a precarious existence until 1825,. 
when he received a grant from the privy purse of iioo 
and later an additional grant of £50, but failed to receive 
an annuity. The London steamboat proprietors also gave 
him a small grant. He died in 183 1 and was buried in 
St. Botolph, Aldgate, London. He was a good mechanic, 
but one who lacked force of character. 

Many years after a granite column was erected at 
Leadhills, Lanarkshire, his birthplace, and a marble bust, 
made by D. W. Stevenson, was placed in the Edinburgh 
Museum of Science and Art, to his well-deserved honor. 

T T T 



188 




Richard Trevithick 

1771-1833 



190 



Richard Trevithick. 

T T ▼ 

Richard Trevithick was the first to apply steam to 
the haulage of loads on railroads. He was born in 1771 
at Illogan, a few miles west of Redruth, in Cornwall, in 
the midst of one of the richest mining fields of England. 
His father was a purser in some of the mines, a man of 
some property and standing. Evidently he permitted his 
son Richard to grow up without much oversight or 
restraint. 

The boy thus grew up without the benefits of school 
discipline, spending his days among the mines and engine 
rooms, picking up information that afterwards was of 
service. 

His father seeing his bent toward mechanics was 
wise enough to foster it, and placed him for a time with 
William Murdock, who was then at Redruth setting up 
pumping engines for Boulton and Watt. 

He was naturally a skillful mechanic, enterprising, 
industrious and thoughtful. He doubtless learned much 
from his associations with Murdock, who was the ablest 
mechanic of his times. Among other things he must 
have known of the ingenious model of a steam carriage 
that Murdock built while there. 

There was great demand about this time for engi- 
neers to set up and run the many steam engines that 
Boulton and Watt were building, and Trevithick very 

191 



Trevithick. 

soon found employment in this work. His father was 
astonished at his presumption, for he was still in his teens, 
but events proved him fully capable for the position. He 
was tempted, however, by the profits earned by Watt's 
engines to construct one that would evade the Watt 
patent and still be successful. With this in view he went 
into partnership with one Bull, who had designed a direct 
pumping engine. 

This engine, under Trevithick's oversight, was a 
success mechanically, but in the ensuing law-suits with 
Watt they were defeated, and the partnership was dis- 
solved. 

A few years later we find him in partnership with 
a cousin, Andrew Vivian, engaged in the manufacture of 
engines, at Camborne, near his old home. 

Trevithick was very ingenious, and contrived in 
many ways to improve the engine. The Watt patent 
expired in 1800, and thereafter others were free to use 
his designs, but Trevithick had already entertained the 
idea of using the expansive force of steam directly with- 
out the intervention of a condenser, and embodied his 
improvements in a patent that he received in 1802, for 
''the application thereof for driving carriages and for 
other purposes." 

This was the first practical embodiment of the use 
of high-pressure steam without condensation. The engine 
was exceedingly simple, effective and economical. 

Trevithick used a cylindrical wrought-iron boiler, 
similar to the one previously used by Evans in America. 

Such boilers were long afterward known in Corn- 
wall as Trevithick boilers. So economical were they that 
one company gave him a present of $1500 in acknowledg- 
ment of the benefit they had derived from their use. 

192 



Trevithick. 

The piston of the engine worked in guides and was 
fastened to a cross-head. This cross-head was connected 
by two side-rods to another cross-head on the other side 
of the shaft and the connecting rod was fastened to the 
second cross-head. The shaft was connected to the 
wheels by toothed gears. The carriage was the most 
compact and sensible of any to be invented for a long 
time after. 

It consisted of a carriage capable of seating a half 
dozen, underneath which was the enclosed engine. It 
rested on four wheels, the two in front serving as guides, 
the two in the rear being driven. He used a fan for 
blast, but also exhausted his steam into the chimney. 
His patent speaks of making the periphery of the wheels 
rough or toothed, but adds that a smooth wheel "in gen- 
eral will be found to answer the intended purpose.'' 

In 1803 the first steam carriage was built, and run 
about the town very successfully as long as steam could 
be kept up. 

The success was so great that it was decided to take 
it to London. It went by road to Plymouth, about ninety 
miles, and thence by boat to London. It was so suc- 
cessful that it became the talk of the town. Such men as 
Sir Humphry Davy and Giles Gilbert rode upon it and 
great crowds came to see it. 

Suddenly Trevithick withdrew the engine, sold the 
carriage to one man, and the engine to another, and 
returned to Cornwall. What his reasons were, no one 
knew, but it illustrated a trait of character that in the 
end ruined his life and deprived him of the honor and 
rewards that were his desert. 

The same year, 1803, he went to Pen-ynlarran, in 
South Wales, to erect a forge engine that he had built, 

T93 



Trevithick. 

and when it was done began the construction of a rail- 
road locomotive, the first ever constructed. Tramways 
were in use in many places at this time, and an excellent 
one near by probably suggested to him the thought of 
using his steam carriage upon it. It was finished and 
tried in 1804. It had a wrought-iron cylindrical boiler 
with internal fire-box and round flue that doubled on 
itself so that the chimney was at the same end as the 
fire box. The cylinder was 434 inches in diameter, 
placed horizontal in the end of the boiler. The piston 
worked in guides and was fastened to a cross-head, from 
which two long connecting rods went on each side of the 
boiler to cranks at the rear. 

This shaft carried a big fly-wheel, and was geared 
through intermediates to the four wheels, which had 
smooth rims. It was used for bringing down iron from 
the old forge. 

It worked well, and under forty pounds steam pres- 
sure made five and one-half miles an hour with heavy 
loads. But frequent accidents resulted from the weight 
breaking the flimsy iron rails, and she finally was ditched 
and then used as a stationary engine. This engine was 
an astonishing success. It was a compact, simple 
mechanism working on high-pressure principle, capable 
of carrying coal and water for a considerable journey, 
and at the same time drawing heavy loads at a speed 
of over five miles an hour. 

It used both fan and exhaust steam for blast, and had 
smooth tread to the wheels. This was indeed the begin- 
ning of modern locomotives. 

But instead of following up his success, Trevithick 
went back to a general engineering practice. In every- 
thing he undertook he was sure to introduce novel and 

194 



Trevithick. 

excellent features, still there was sure to crop out that 
lack of persistence to bring to naught his excellent begin- 
nings. 

In 1806 we find him entering into a contract to lift 
up from the bed of the Thames the ballast for all the 
shipping, a matter of 500,000 tons. This involved huge 
chain and bucket dredging machines. Two engines were 
already built, when he quarreled with the capitalists, and 
the contract was never sealed. 

Nevertheless his engine business prospered, and he 
was on the high road to success. But his very success 
in the Cornwall district seems to have unsettled him. He 
kept suggesting new and radical changes, and finally left 
to go to London. 

In 1808 he took out two patents for discharging ships 
of their cargo, and stowing cargoes by machinery, in 
1809 another patent for constructing docks, ships and 
propelling vessels. This last patent covered the use of 
wrought-iron plates for naval construction that with 
cheap steel has come into general practice. 

While .Trevithick was in London he undertook the 
the most astonishing task of tunneling the Thames. It 
had been suggested some years before, but in 1807, when 
Trevithick became the engineer, the task was pushed. In 
five months over 900 feet wire dug, when a series of 
mishaps interfered. Still he persisted until, after 1,100 
feet had been completed, he was forced by frequent and 
serious breaks to give up the undertaking. In the years 
that followed he took out two or three patents for novel 
engines and boilers. In one he specified and described 
our modern screw propeller. His success in the construc- 
tion of pumping engines brought him to the attention in 
1814 of a company engaged in pumping out abandoned 

195 



Trevithick. 

silver mines in Peru. A number of his engines were pur- 
chased, and he with others went with them to erect and 
to participate in the enormous profits expected. At first 
great success was theirs, and Trevithick computed his 
share as certainly $500,000 a year, when suddenly, in 
18 18, a revolution ruined the company, and Trevithick 
with one or tw^o others escaped with their lives northwest 
to Panama. Here, ragged and penniless, he met Robert 
Stephenson, who assisted him home to England, which 
he reached after a serious shipwreck in 1827. He took 
out two more patents, one in 1831, a method of heating 
apartments, and the other in 1832, for improvements in 
the steam engine ; but neither was of moment, except that 
the latter included the use of superheated steam, and the 
use of the impact of high-pressure steam directly against 
water as a means of propelling a boat. 

Strange to say that in spite of all that he had done 
in inventing the locomotive, he should have taken no part 
in the interesting developments of 1829-1832, with 
which the name of George Stephenson is associated, and 
the ultimate triumph of the locomotive. 

Instead, during those years he gave all his thought 
to inventing a steam wagon to run over the highways, 
and to the perfecting of his steam jet propulsion of 
steamboats. While thus busied he died in 1833, when 
sixty-two years of age. 

As he died with no means and deeply in debt, the 
workmen at the shop where his inventions were being 
developed contributed enough to bury him, but no stone 
marks the resting-place of this great but vacillating 
mechanic. 

▼ TV 

196 




Henry Maudsley 



198 



Henry Maudsley. 



T T T 

Henry Maudsley was the originator of modern 
machine tools. He came of an old English family who 
had their seat near Ormskirk, but who became scattered 
during the eighteenth century. William Maudsley, 
father of Henry, was a joiner working in the neighbor- 
hood of Bolton. He got into some trouble and joined the 
Royal Artillery, to be sent, soon afterward, to the West 
Indies, where he was badly wounded. He was sent home, 
and afterwards discharged, but being a handy workman 
was soon employed in the arsenal. Here he was married 
and Henry was born in August, 1770. When twelve 
years of age he was sent to work filling cartridges, and 
two years later he was set at work in the carpenters' shop. 
His heart, however, was in the nearby blacksmith shop, 
and after several reprimands for neglecting his work he 
was transferred to the smithy when fifteen years of age. 

His heart was in this work and he rapidly became an 
expert craftsman, especially in forging light iron work, 
and, in the use of the file, he soon surpassed all others. 

At this time Joseph Bramah had taken out patents 
for improved locks of the now well-known tumbler type. 
These were a great improvement over previous locks. 
Bramah challenged any one to pick a lock of his manu- 
facture, and the challenge was unaccepted until fifty years 

199 



Maudsley. 

later, when Hobbs, an American expert, after sixteen days 
of effort, finally succeeded. 

This lock was so delicate a mechanism that he found 
difficulty in securing workmen skillful enough to make 
them. Maudsley was recommended to him, but when 
Bramah saw how young he was, at that time only eight- 
een, he hesitated to employ him. His need was so great, 
however, that he finally hired him. When Maudsley 
presented himself for service a new difficulty arose. He 
had not served the requisite seven years of apprentice- 
ship and the other workmen refused to receive him. 

Maudsley himself solved the difficulty by proposing 
the repair of a worn-out and broken bench vice before 
six o'clock, and if his workmanship did not commend him 
he would withdraw. His success was complete. The 
most exacting of the workmen acknowledged his skill. 
The tact and good sense thus early shown were character- 
istic of him in all his relations with his w^orkmen. 

Maudsley soon proved himself to be the most skill- 
ful of them all. It is interesting to note that the very 
padlock that fifty years later withstood the American ex- 
pert for sixteen days, was one made by Maudsley's own 
hands when in the employ of Bramah. 

He had the surest eye and the best judgment in 
undertaking any new work, and it was more and more 
referred to him. 

Notwithstanding his youth, he was advanced from 
place to place until, by unanimous consent, he was made 
the head foreman. 

Maudsley saw at once that it was essential, if the 
locks were to be manufactured in any quantity, that the 
parts must be made by machines that would be inde- 
pendent of men's carelessness. Skilled hand work could 

200 



Maudsley. 



make a few, but the number were limited, the expense 
great and the merit very unequal. He became especially 
useful in designing special tools for making the patent 
locks. Smiles says : ''In this department Maudsley was 
eminently successful, and to his laborious ingenuity, as 
first displayed in Bramah's workshops, and afterwards in 
his own establishment, we unquestionably owe much of 
the power and acccuracy of our present self-acting 
machinery.'' 

Another of his inventions, that alone should bring 
him fame, was the leather self-tightening collar for pack- 
ing hydraulic presses. It was Bramah again who pat- 
ented the press, but its usefulness was nullified by the 
packing necessary to withstand the enormous pressure. 
It was Maudsley who designed the leather cup that clings 
the closer with added pressure but without noticeably 
increasing friction. 

Maudsley stayed with Bramah eight years with but 
slight increase of wages, and when he, at last, asked for 
an increase was refused so brusquely that he resigned, 
and in 1797 opened a small shop of his own near Oxford 
Street. Little by little work came to him, and every task 
was so nicely done that it invariably brought him new 
work. Maudsley continued to apply himself to the inven- 
tion and improvement of tools that would insure precision 
of work and make him, in a measure, independent of the 
carelessness of workmen. It was in this endeavor that he 
brought to perfection that great improvement with which 
his name is usually connected, the invention of the slide 
rest. The first he ever made was while he was still at 
Bramah's shop, but with his additional improvements he 
brought the lathe, for the first time, to be a machine of 
precision, and laid the foundation for the success of all 

201 



Maudsley. 



our modern machine tools. Before this, nicety of con- 
struction depended altogether on correctness of eye and 
manual dexterity, with consequent high cost and unequal 
merit. Thereafter followed that correctness, uniformity 
and economy that increasingly marked the machine con- 
struction of the nineteenth century. 

One of the early tasks that came to Maudsley was 
brought by Brunei. He had been granted a patent for 
tackle blocks which had been adopted by the admiralty. 
Alaudsley's high reputation came to Brunei's attention, 
and he was engaged to perfect the machinery for their 
manufacture. 

^Maudsley, who was a fine draftsman, made the draw- 
ings and the working models in 1801. Before beginning 




Maudslev's Lathe 



construction he removed his shop to Margaret Street. 
The whole of the machinery was there constructed bv 



202 



Maudsl( 



■y- 



Maudsley. It took six long years, and was not ready 
for operation until 1808. It required no less than forty- 
four different machines to do the work, every one of 
which embodied some more or less radical invention and 
improvement by Maudsley. These machines were in 
regular employment at the Portsmouth dockyard for 
upwards of fifty years. 

The success of this block-making machinery brought 
Maudsley added fame and prosperity. 

He moved again, this time to Lambeth, and took in a 
partner in 18 10, the company thereafter being known as 
Maudsley & Field. They made many and various kinds 
of machinery, flour mills, saw mills, mint machinery, 
machine tools and engines of all kinds, especially marine 
engines. A patent granted in 1807 for improvement in 
steam engines, specified, among other things, the now 
common pyramidal type of marine engine, with direct 
connections from piston to crank. He invented a ma- 
chine for punching boiler plates, and continued to improve 
the lathe as long as he lived. He made some large 
machines, but he took the greatest interest in machines 
of delicacy and precision. 

His love for accuracy early led him to give thought 
to improvement in screw cutting. He made a machine 
for cutting original screws and from that made the first 
screw-cutting lathe. He also took the first steps for 
securing uniformity and standard pitch. 

Like all good workmen he took great pride in keep- 
ing his tools in good order and condition. Every machine 
to which he gave thought came from his hand simplified, 
improved, and wih the impress of his personality upon it. 

But that for which Maudsley is most wc^rthy of 
remembrance is not the machinery he built, but the men 
he trained. His exceedingly attractive nature, his tall, 
fine presence, his genial ways, bound men to him;\not 

203 



Maudsley. 

only his friends, but his workmen loved him as a man, 
while honoring him as a master workman. It was quite 
natural that there should gather around him a group of 
assistants who were young men of ability and worth. In 
fact his shop came to have a reputation all over England 
as the place for securing the best mechanical training. 
It was with him that such men as James Nasmyth, Sir 
Joseph Whitworth, Joseph Clement, and a host of oth- 
ers received their training. This training was not in 
mechanics alone, but in the wise comments and advice 
that fell from his lips and, like seed falling in good 
ground, sprang up, in the years that followed, in the 
able life of his '' boys.'' 

He had his friends also among the foremost scholars 
and scientists of the day, who made his private workshop 
a favorite rendezvous. From his shop radiated an in- 
fluence that is plainly seen in the wonderful develop- 
ment of mechanical engineering in England from his 
time on. Under his training such men as Nasmyth, 
Clement and Whitworth, and others received their train- 
ing, and from them his influence passed on to Sellers 
and Colt, to E. K. Root, and Francis A. Pratt, to shape 
also our American practice. 

In personal appearance his was of commanding 
stature, six feet two inches tall, and massively built. He 
had a high forehead, eyes bright and keen, lips expres- 
sive of good humor, but strong and alert. He was cheer- 
ful, honest, intellectual and energetic. 

He went to France to see a friend who was very sick 
and, on returning, caught a severe cold, from which he 
died in 1831. 

T T T 



204 




George Stephenson 
1781-1847 



206 



George Stephenson, 



T T T 

The success of George Stephenson was the natural 
result of steady, patient, hard work. He had very much 
to contend with in the beginning and won out by well di- 
rected energy. Stephenson's life was ideal, in a way. It 
passed through want, desire, struggle ; to achievement, 
honors, leisure and comfort. 

His parents were very poor colliers of the north of 
England, of Scotch and English blood. He was bom 
m 1 78 1 in the midst of the harshest social conditions. 
Poor as he was, however, it is remembered that Stephen- 
son's father was a great favorite with the villagers and 
the children, and had a very strong love for birds and all 
nature. George thus came naturally by his characteristic 
good cheer, affection and love of nature. As a mere child 
he began to work, being taken on at the mines at a piti- 
fully young age to pick out stone from the coal. Then he 
was advanced to driving the gin horses. 

Long as were his hours and hard as was the labor, 
he found time to play, to build clay engines, and make 
pets of all sorts of birds and animals. He was so young 
when he was taken on as an assistant fireman with his 
father that he used to hide when the owner came around, 
lest he be discharged as too small for the responsibility. 
At fourteen he was made first assistant at a shilling a day. 
At this time the family of eight were living in a one-room 

207 



Stephenson. 



cottage. At fifteen he was made a fireman. Then he be- 
came ambitious to be an engineman — and to this end he 
made every eflfort to prepare himself — still he had time for 
play, and at this age he took the most interest in feats 
of strength, in which he was very successful, lifting 
weights and wrestling. 

At seventeen he was made ''plugman," one step high- 
er than his father. This was in the days when "auto- 
matic'' machinery was unknown, and George's place re- 
quired much skill and judgment to regulate the pump to 
suit the varying conditions of water and steam. In his 
study he found excuses for taking his pump and engine 
apart for cleaning or repairs — until he became expert as 
an engineman. 

He began to appreciate his loss in not being able to 
read — and big as he was he began to go to school even- 
ings, and saved every penny he could for the expense. 
He kept on making clay engines and experimenting with 
everything in his way. At nineteen he could read, and 
write his own name, and began to study arithmetic. At 
twenty he was made brakesman, and secured a night ap- 
pointment so that he could have more time to study 
arithmetic and mend shoes for his fellow workmen. 

At twenty-two he was made a full engineman, and 
married, but continued just the same his evening study 
and experiments. It cost him more to live, so he took 
on more outside work, mending clocks, shoes, and, hardest 
of all, shovelling ballast from the ships that came for coal. 
In 1803 ^^s born his only son, Robert, who became his 
great comfort, pride and assistant, an engineer second only 
to his father in ability. In 1805 Stephenson's name for a 
sober, skillful "engine doctor" was becoming known, and 
he went from one position to another, being sent for to 

208 



Stephenson. 



remedy troubles with engines, pumps and winding ma- 
chines. This brought him his first salaried position, en 
ginewright for all the pits of the Grand Allies. 

His only child, Robert, was becoming old enough to 
be sent to school, and he redoubled his efforts to earn 
money. As years went by they worked and studied to 
gether, a mutual comfort and inspiration. Robert studied 
or read aloud while the father continued his experiments 
and inventions until their cottage became a museum 
of mechanics. As engineer, Stephenson now began to 
make improvements in the colliery outfits, and the im- 
provements that first interested him were the tramways 
from the pit to the dock. He improved the rails, and 
made the first incline in his district on which the loaded 
wagons descending hauled up the empties. He had al- 
ready begun to give intense thought to the substitution 
of engines for horses where the inclines were not possible 
This was in 1813. Many other men had been at work 
on the same problem with more or less success. There 
were Cugnot, the French engineer, Moore and Murdock, 
the Englishmen, and Evans, the American. 

There were others of his own day who were still 
working at it. Trevithick, the pupil of Murdock, was as 
much the inventor of the locomotive as anyone and was 
on the verge of a great success, but missed it by cumber- 
ing his experiments with toothed wheels, intermediate 
gears, and mechanical draughts. His impatience lost him 
success and credit. Blenkinsop's engine ran for many 
years, even after better ones were invented. 

Mr. Blackett, the owner of a neighboring colliery, 
persisted in his efforts to get an engine to haul coal on his 
tramway and finally discovered that the traction of a 
smooth wheel on a smooth rail was sufficient, and that 

209 



Stephenson. 



all the cogs, racks, spurs, and endless chain were useless, 
but he could only draw about three miles an hour. After 
all these came Stephenson, and by his better mechanical 
judgment and patient energy brought the problem to a 
successful conclusion. 

He first visited and inspected a Blenkinsop engine and 
the engine at Mr. Blackett's, and then constructed his first 
''traveling engine," the Blucher. 

Space will not allow details ; sufficient it must be to 
say that it drew thirty tons at four miles an hour on an 
up grade of i in 450, and continued to do so for four 
years. This engine, no more economical than horses, 
was the best up to that tim.e, but when Stephenson turned 
his exhaust steam into the chimney for forced draught, 
he doubled its efifectiveness at once. In 1815 he built a 
new engine that was a decided improvement. It had 
simple direct connection to drive-wheels, on smooth rails, 
parallel connection with the other wheels, exhaust steam 
draught, and a substitute for springs to alleviate the evils 
of rigidity, the germ of the modern locomotive. 

We ought to stop here long enough to tell of his in- 
vention, quite independently, but at the same time with Sir 
Humphry Davy, of the first practical safety lamp for use 
in coal mines — something that has done more than any 
one thing else to make the life of coal miners bearable. 
To bring the safety lamp to perfection he risked his life 
again and again. It was only a small part of his time 
that he could give to it, but he gave it gladly from per- 
sonal knowledge of the terrible dangers to which the 
miner was continually exposed. 

Stephenson's main attention was more and more 
given to the improvement of the machinery under his 
charge, of which the tramways and engines were no small 

2TO 



Steph 



enson. 



part. He invented a lap-jointed cast-iron rail that rested 
on an improved chair that was a great improvement on 
the old-style plates that butted together on a flat chair. 
With this patent were coupled some improvements in the 
locomotive also, the most notable of which was the in- 
troduction of steam cushions to overcome the evils of 
irregular road-bed and rigidity. Stephenson's good judg- 
ment was shown at this time in refusing to try to adapt 
the locomotive to common road traveling, a conclusion to 
which he came after careful experiments on the resistance 
to traction. Although his locomotives at Killingworth 
were in operation for some years, they excited little out- 
side interest. 

In 1819 another mine determined to build a tram- 
way, and employed Stephenson to engineer it. This was 
successfully accomplished in 1822, when five locomotives 
were each hauling 64 tons at four miles an hour. At this 
time his son, Robert, was of great assistance to him, but 
he resisted the temptation, to take him from school, and 
at great expense sent him to Edinburgh University. The 
son repaid this by taking down the lectures in full, and 
reading them afterward to his father. In 1821 the Stock- 
ton and Darlington road was proposed, and Stephenson 
was again secured as engineer. He had already become 
a partner in an iron foundry, and now he became partner 
in the first locomotive factory. 

This road was open for traffic in 1825, using Steph- 
enson's locomotives. The first train consisted of six 
wagons of coal and flour, a passenger car for the direc- 
tors, twenty-one temporary wagons for spectators, and 
then six wagons of coal. The speed reached six miles 
an hour. The road was a success from the beginning, 
but much to the surprise of all, the income came, not 

211 



Steph 



enson. 



from local sale of land and coal as expected, but from 
passengers and through coal. The latter shipments in- 
creased in a few years from almost nothing to 500,000 
tons a year. 

The success of this road was the turning point of 
railway construction. Before it was ready the plan for 
a railroad from Manchester to Liverpool was under 
consideration to relieve the canal congestion. 

i\Ir. Stephenson's energy and good judgment com- 
mended themselves to the . directors, and he was made 
engineer of this line also. But so strange and flighty did 
his plans of running twelve miles an hour seem to Par- 
liament, when a charter was sought, that the charter was 
at first defeated ; after discharging him the charter was 
secured a year later, but when the actual building was 
to be undertaken he was again secured ; there was no 
one else who was fitted to overcome the tremendous diffi- 
culties of bog and mountain and personal hostilities. 

On this road of twenty-nine miles, there were miles 
of bog, miles of tunnel ; there was a two-mile cut of eighty 
feet deep in places out of solid rock ; there were sixty- 
three bridges including a great viaduct seventy feet high. 
All of this was accomplished in some seven years, with 
unskilled engineer assistants, and the bitterest hostility 
of land owners and canal rivals. Not until 1828 was 
it even decided not to use horse power, and then came 
the battle between stationary engines and locomotives, 
Stephenson sturdily advocating the latter. 

At last he secured the adoption of the locomotive, 
and then the vote to offer a prize for the best one to be 
ready for duty on the completion of the road-bed. There 
were four competitors, of which Stephenson's ''Rocket" 
was the winner. All others failed on some of the re- 

212 



Steph 



enson. 



quirements. Stephenson's alone met them all, and sur- 
passed some. The first charter was defeated because 
Stephenson mentioned twelve miles an hour as a possible 
speed. At the test the Rocket actually went at the rate 
of thirty-five. The improvements that Stephenson had 
introduced in this engine were vital ; the boiler was multi- 
tubular, cylinders outside, and a reduced orifice to the 
exhaust steam blast in the smoke-stack. 

The boiler was six feet long, three feet four inches 
in diameter. The lower half was filled with three-inch 
copper tubes. The two cylinders were inclined and 
coupled directly to the single pair of drive wheels. The 
whole including its load of water weighed four and one- 
quarter tons and rested on four wheels. 

Of the other engines that competed, Ericsson's Nov- 
elty was the only one that needs notice. At first it was 
the favorite. Its speed was even greater than that of 
the Rocket, but its extreme lightness resulted in frequent 
breakage and its mechanical draught was not a success. 
At last it withdrew, leaving the field entirely to Stephen- 
son. 

From this time on Stephenson's reputation was safe. 
By 1835 he was acting as engineer or consulting en- 
gineer for a score of railways. He worked day and 
night ; a week in Scotland, the next in England, and the 
next in Ireland ; then back to London for committee meet- 
ings ; then to his locomotive works, and then back again 
surveying. In 1837 he traveled 20,000 miles in post- 
chaise. He employed a secretary, who followed him 
about, and often wrote thirty to forty letters a day — let- 
ters of technical detail, argument for committees, reports 
for directors, and plans for improvements. On one oc- 
casion he dictated continuously for twelve hours. 

213 



Stephenson. 



Fortunately, Stephenson had perfect health, and 
could command sleep at a moment's desire. He had been 
trained in a hard school, and could bear with ease con- 
ditions that prostrated his assistants. He was sent for 
by European governments for advice, and became a great 
social favorite, as his vivacity and cheerfulness, strong 
good sense and affection won his way with all. He 
chatted with the Queen, and the King of Belgium, and 
Sir Robert Peel as simply and interestingly as he did 
with his old colliery mates. 

As he passed beyond sixty years of age, he gradually 
withdrew from affairs, passing over as much as he could 
to his already famous son. Then he threw his energy 
into his private business, and more and more of it into 
the life of a country gentleman ; raising fruits and prize 
animals, taking as much interest in making a cucumber 
grow straight as formerly in making locomotives. No 
man enjoyed his latter days more highly than did George 
Stephenson, and no one better deserved the affection of 
all than did he. From the first he had been honest, cheer- 
ful, and generous. Ever ready to give credit and praise 
to his assistants and associates, none ever repaid their 
chief with warmer loyalty than they. 

George Stephenson was a great engineer. First of 
all he was practical. He was not a dreamer. He was 
inventive, but coupled with it great sagacity. He asked, 
first of all, can it be done ? and then, will it pay ? He was 
thoroughly honest, a safe man to follow. But he was 
more than a great engineer, he was one of Nature's noble- 
men — healthy, energetic, thoughtful, cheerful, generous, 
and affectionate. 

Emerson said of him, 'It was worth crossing the 
Atlantic to have seen Stephenson alone ; he had such na- 

214 



Stephenson. 



tive force of character and vigor of intellect." His native 
modesty, quite naturally refused knighthood when it was 
offered. 

He died quietly in 1847 ^^ sixty-eight years of age. 
His body was followed to the grave by a great concourse 
of working people, and his memory was honored by high 
and low everywhere. 

T T T 



215 



■ 






^^^^^1 






■ 






V 


fffl; 






^^^■I^^Bik,^ 




■'^: 


- :^^^^^^^^^^. 





Isambard Kingdom Brunei 
1806-1859 



216 



Isambard Kingdom Brunei. 

T T T 

Although Mr. Brunei could hardly be called an in- 
ventor, yet he played such an important part in solving 
the engineering problems incident to the introduction of 
railroads and steam navigation, that we can not justly 
omit him from the list. 

He was born in the midst of engineering problems, 
for his father was Sir Marc Isambard Brunei, the famous 
designer of the plans for making tackle blocks by ma- 
chinery, which we read about in the early life of Mauds- 
ley. His father was an officer of the French Navy at 
the time of the French Revolution. Because of his strong 
Royalist sympathies, it was dangerous to remain and he 
escaped to America. He landed at New York in 1793 
and obtained employment as a civil engineer. In a few 
years he became engineer for the State of New York and 
while in that office designed a cannon foundry and other 
public works. In 1799 he went over to England and en- 
gaged in general engineering work, was married and 
Isambard was born in 1806. He was educated in pri- 
vate schools until 1820, when he attended college at 
Paris. From the time he was four years old he showed 
a talent for drawing which his father cultivated and 
trained until he became an excellent draftsman while still 
in his teens, his drawings being exceptionally precise and 
neat. 

217 



Brunei. 

From 1823 he was regularly employed in his father's 
office in London. His father was engaged at this time on 
the plans for several suspension bridges and, of most im- 
portance, a tunnel under the Thames. 

This was a new venture and full of engineering diffi- 
cult^'es. It had been tried by Mr. Trevithick in 1807, but 
only the beginnings w^ere made when it was abandoned, 
leaving no fund of experience to guide latter attempts. 
Sir Isambard was obliged, therefore, to originate his own 
method. 

His method was to sink a shaft about 50 feet deep 
and at the bottom to tunnel straight ahead, lining the tun- 
nel with brick as he proceeded. The soil was clay, with 
frequent seams of mud from the river above. His shield 
was composed of a row of twelve cells that, together, 
made the face of the bore. Each cell was pressed against 
the face to be excavated by jacks placed against the edge 
of the brick work already constructed. A workman 
would enter a cell, dig out the mud in front of him, force 
the cell forward to fill up the hole and then brick up the 
tunnel back of him. Then do the same at the next cell, 
and so on. There were, of course, other devices for pro- 
tecting the face of the cells and the space between the 
brick and cells. 

Borings were made, but not as carefully as would be 
done now, and their troubles increased with repeated 
breaks and floodings. Work was abandoned January, 
]828. after completing only 600 feet. 

During these five years Mr. Brunei took an increas- 
ingly responsible part. He was only twenty-two when 
the work was abandoned, but, as resident engineer, was 
watching the shields night and day and, after the final 
break he was the one who descended in a diving bell to 

218 



Brunei. 

the bottom of the Thames to see what manner of a hole 
it was and what damage had been done to the brick work. 

With this five years' experience Mr. Brunei set out 
to establish himself in an independent ens^ineering busi- 
ness. Years later, when work was resumed on the tun- 
nel by the father and it was brought to completion, the 
son was too busily engaged in his own enterprises to have 
part in it. 

For two years Mr. Brunei devoted his time to study 
and observation with Mr. Babbage, Prof, Faraday and 
other scientific friends. 

In 1829 he submitted three designs for a suspension 
bridge at Clifton, that revealed those traits that charac- 
terized his work to the end, namely, boldness and archi- 
tectural beauty. A second competition was held a year 
later and again Mr. Brunei's design was approved and 
this time accepted and he was made engineer. The con- 
struction was not begun until 1836. The bridge was 700 
feet span and the roadway 248 feet above high water. 
During his life Mr. Brunei built many other bridges of 
timber, wrought iron, and suspension, all of which were 
marked by the same bold originality. 

The largest of his bridges was the Royal Albert, 
which carries the Cornwall Railway across the River 
Tamar at Saltash. The river is 1,100 feet wide and 70 
feet deep. This bridge had twO' spans of 455 feet each 
and the approaches made up a length of 2,200 feet. The 
center pier was a 35-foot circular cylinder, resting on rock 
87 feet below high water, and filled with concrete. This 
was carried up 12 feet above high water and on it rested 
four cast iron columns to the level of the railroad, 100 
feet above high water. Each truss was a combination of 
two huge suspending chains and a wrought iron oval tube 

219 



Brunei. 

16 feet 9 inches in its largest dimension. The rise of the 
arch was equal to the fall of the chain and, being con- 
nected at the abutments, the outward thrust of the arch 
was counterbalanced by the inward pull of the chains. 
The bridge was completed in 1859, the same year in 
which he died. 

But the bridge building of Mr. Brunei was only in- 
cidental to his railroad work. As early as 1833, when 
railroad building was in its infancy, he was made engineer 
for the construction of the Great Western Railway. His 
preliminary surveys were soon made, but it was 1835 
before the charter was granted. 

Brunei was at this time only 29 years old, but was 
already counted one of the best engineers of his day. 
With characteristic boldness he attacked the problems 
and, as usual, settled them radically dilferent from the 
customary w^ay. He decided, first of all, to adopt the 
pneumatic system of propulsion. He was not its inven- 
tor, but after considering the nature of the country and 
the expense of operating steam locomotives, he decided 
that the pneumatic system was most promising. 

This system called for a long tube placed in the 
ground midway between the rails. This tube had a slit 
its entire length, which was ordinarily closed by a flap- 
v^alve. At regular distances, air pumps were located 
which exhausted the air from the tube in front of a train. 
The motor on the train consisted of a piston fitting in the 
tube and connected to the car by a narrow bar arranged 
to at.tomatically open the valve just behhid the piston as 
the partial vacuum drew the piston and cars forward. It 
was easy to figure the economy of this system in advance, 
but in practice unforseen mechanical difficulties continual- 
ly troubled them until the system was abandoned in 1848. 

220 



Brunei. 

In the matter of gauge, also, Mr, Brunei stood alone. 
He foresaw that, for economy, railroads must be designed 
to operate heavier equipment than in use at that time. 
The 4 foot, 854 inch gauge, already standard in the 
North and East, seemed to him to limit any increase of 
weight or speed. He, therefore, built the Great Western 
with gauge of 7 feet and constructed his engines and cars 
of unprecedented size. Later on, as this system came 
into contact with the other systems, the inconveniences 
were so great that they had to give way and equip the 
line with a third rail so that narrow gauge standard cars 
could also move without unloading, and still later the 
broad gauge was discontinued altogether. 

In choosing the broad gauge, Mr. Brunei showed the 
better foresight and judgment, for unquestionably it 
would be an advantage if a broader gauge than 4 foot, 
Sy^ inch had been made the standard. 

A unique plan of his was the erection of a great ter- 
minal hotel at the London station. 

Still another plan was to prolong their railroad line 
by a line of steam boats to run regularly in connection 
with the railroad from Bristol to New York. At first 
his recommendation was treated as a joke, but after he 
had proved to his directors the possibility of a steamship 
carrying coal enough to reach New York, they adopted 
his plan and authorized him to proceed with the con- 
struction of the first steamboat designed to make regular 
trips across the Atlantic. 

His main point was, that the work of propulsion ni- 
creased about \s the square of the dimensions of the 
boat, but that the capacity for carrying increased by tlie 
cube. This was vehemently denied by experts of his day, 
but has since been universally accepted. His directors 

221 



Brunei. 

showed their faith in him by enabHng him to construct 
the Great Western steamship. It was completed in 1838. 
The papers of the day spoke of ''her magnificent propor- 
tions and stupendous machinery." She was 212 feet long 
and 35 feet 4 inches broad. Her engines were made by 
Maudsley & Field, cylinders 73^^ inches, stroke 7 feet. 
She made her first voyage in 15 days and had 200 tons of 
coal left over when she steamed into New York harbor. 
This one trip settled once for all the desirability of large 
steamers for ocean travel and the credit belongs to I. K. 
Brunei. 

The Great Western Co., encouraged by the success 
of their first vessel, determined on the construction of one 
still larger, and, true to his nature, Mr. Brunei advocated 
still more novel features. This time he recommended 
that the new vessel, to be called the Great Britain, be 
made of iron and with a capacity of 3,443 tons burden. 

They also decided, this time against the advice of 
Mr. Brunei, to build their own engines. For this they 
erected and equipped very large shops, and thereafter 
Mr. Brunei had the engineering oversight of them, also. 
Before the vessel was completed, in 1840, the use of the 
screw propeller in ocean navigation was suggested. Mr. 
Brunei made a careful study of the subject and in his 
report urged the company to adopt the screw propeller in 
the place of side wheels. His recommendation was ac- 
cepted and the Great Britain became the first ocean going 
steamer to use the screw propeller. Mr. . Brunei took 
great pains in designing the structure of this vessel, with 
such success that she withstood being wrecked in 1846. 
She had been practically abandoned when Mr. Brunei 
went to examine her. He reported in great heat that 
she was practically unhurt and protested against abandon- 

222 



Brunei. 

ing her. He protected her from the winter storms and 
later floated her, and on examination was found to have 
suffered no' general damage. She afterward did good 
service for 40 years on an AustraHan Hne. She had five 
water-tight bulkheads and, among other interesting feat- 
ures, may be mentioned a balanced rudder, two bilge 
keels, but no central keel, and a hollow crank-shaft. The 
boilers were a group of six, back to back, and were found 
later to be insufiicient. They were run at only eight 
pounds pressure. The power was transmitted to the pro- 
peller shaft by chain and sprockets speeding the latter, 
three to one. She was 322 feet long, 51 foot beam with 
displacement of 3,000 tons. Her engine had four cylin- 
ders, 88 inches diameter and 6 foot stroke. 

Soon after Mr. Brunei had recommended the adop- 
tion of the screw propeller he was called upon by the 
British Admirality to make experiments and investiga- 
tions as to the advisability of adopting the propeller in the 
British Navy. So satisfactory was his report that by 
1845 twenty vessels had been made over to use the screw 
propeller. 

In 185 1 Mr. Brunei became engineer of the Aus- 
tralian Mail Co. and built for them two successful ships, 
the Victoria and Adelaid. In 1852 the Eastern Steam 
Navigation Co. was organized to carry out a proposal of 
Mr. Brunei to construct a vessel of still larger dimen- 
sions. This was to be called the Great Eastern, and so 
bold was the design that it is only within a few years that 
her dimensions have been exceeded. She was built 680 
feet long by 83 feet broad and 53 feet deep, with a gross 
tonnage of 18,915. She was divided into 11 water-tight 
compartments. The upper deck was made cellular and 
her skin was double, 6 feet above her water line, with 

223 



Brunei 

longitudinal webs. There were two longitudinal bulk- 
heads 36 feet apart and 350 feet long extending to the 
upper deck, which added great strength to the ship when 
considered as a girder, and made her exceptionally 
staunch. Her power equipment consisted of side wheels, 
intended to do one-third of the propulsion, and a screw 
propeller for two-thirds. Her paddles w^ere 56 feet in 
diameter, 30 floats, 13 feet by 3 feet, and her screw 24 
feet in diameter with 4 blades, set at 24 feet pitch. The 
paddle engines could develop 1,000 nominal horsepower 
and consisted of 4 oscillating cylinders 16 feet 2 inches in 
diameter and 14 foot stroke, working in pairs on a single 
crank. The screw engine could develop 1,600 horse- 
power, consisted of 4 cylinders, 7 feet in diameter, 4 foot 
stroke, working in opposite pairs on a single crank. Be- 
sides these there were a number of auxiliary engines for 
hoisting the anchors, pumping, and operating the screw 
when in harbor. Her main boilers were ten in number, 
four for the paddle engines and six for the screw. 

In addition she had six masts fully equipped with 
I'ig'gii^R ^^d sails. With his usual boldness, Mr. Brunei 
built her level, with broadside to the river, and although 
she was successfully launched in i860, yet there was con- 
siderable trouble which caused much anxiety to her en- 
gineer. 

Meanwhile, the P. & O. Steamship Co. having re- 
ceived the monopoly of carrying the mails to the far 
East, the use of the great steamship was transferred to 
the Atlantic service, making a number of trips to New 
York at about 14 knots per hour. 

Commercially she was never a very great success 
from her lack of adequate business, Mr. Brunei, in his 
characteristic boldness, having gotten ahead of the times. 

224 



Brunei. 

She found her best use as a cable ship in laying the great 
ocean cables. At one time she carried a cargo of cable 
tor Bombay by way of the Cape of Good Hope. With 
the cable and coal she drew 34 feet 6 inches with the 
enormous displacement of 32,724 tons. 

At one time she was used as a transport, carrying 
comfortably over 3,000 persons, besides 200 horses, coal 
and freight. In service she proved very seaworthy and 
comfortable, rolling very slightly in the heaviest storms 
and carrying with ease enormous loads when laying ocean 
cables. She was notably easy to handle in narrow chan- 
nels and ports because of her two sets of engines, it being 
possible to turn her easily in a very small area. Many 
minor features introduced by Mr. Brunei, such as jacket- 
ing all steam surfaces and superheating steam before 
entering the cylinders, have since been generally adopted. 

Sufficient has been given to show the phenomenal 
capacity for hard work that lay in Mr. Brunei. We have, 
for convenience of narration, divided his labors in sec- 
tions, but it is to be remembered that he was engaged in 
all at the same time. His greatest bridge, his greatest 
steamship, dock work, and railroad construction in Eng- 
land, Italy and India, were all going forward at the same 
time. In addition, he was interested in the construction 
of rifles and cannon and urged strongly on the Admiral- 
ity, a floating battery, that would have developed, if it 
had been built, into an armored gunboat. 

Still another thing was his design, for the war office, 
of standard, expansible, iron buildings for hospital ser- 
vice in the Crimean war. 

In private life Mr. Brunei was exceedingly cheerful 
and fond of recreation and pleasure. He slept very little, 

225 



Brunei. 

but worked early and late, taking his rest in laughter and 
good cheer between times. His friends all spoke of his 
uniform kindness and unselfish friendship. Even some 
of his keenest professional rivals were his warmest 
friends, and in spite of the intensest dififerences of opin- 
ion on scientific questions he could hold their sincere 
friendship. It is said that no one ever saw him ill-tem- 
pered or biased in judgment of others. As an engineer, 
in spite of his boldness, he was singularly cautious, pru- 
dent and far-sighted. He died in 1859 of paralysis, aged 
only fifty-three. 

▼ T T 



226 




James Nasmyth 
1808-1890 

By G.Reid, R. S, A, Etched by Paul Rajon 



^28 



James Nasmyth. 



T T T 

We remember the name of James Nasmyth with the 
invention of the steami hammer, but he did many things, 
and did them well. He came of an old titled Scotch fam- 
ily whose records go back nearly a thousand years. They 
were staunch loyalists in the border troubles, at least until 
James II. tried to make Catholic their Scotch Presbyter- 
ianism. Once when sorely beset by the Scots, so runs 
the story, their ancestor took refuge in a smithy, and set 
to work as a striker. He wasn't very skillful, missed the 
iron and broke his hammer on the anvil. One of the 
Scots exclaimed ''You're nae smith." Being discovered 
he seized a sword and, fighting fiercely, vanquished his 
enemies. They took the new name "Nasmyth,'' and the 
family arms became a sword between two broken ham- 
mers. 

When their ancestors broke with their king rather 
than change their religion, they lost their property and 
from that time on were obliged to work hard and spend 
sparingly. Something of the refinement of the old life 
remained and showed itself in their skill in art and love 
for learning. 

James Nasmyth's immediate ancestors were artists, 
and architects of note. 

His father was the founder of the landscape school, 
a man of ardent temperament, and intense love of nature. 

229 



Nasmyth. 



James inherited his father's artistic temperament, love 
of all things beautiful and delight in nature. He him- 
self was an artist with pencil, and a finished draftsman. 

There developed in him also a mechanical bent that 
came to dominate the artistic. As a mere lad he began 
to make things, and by the time he was sixteen he was 
skillful with tools and turned his bedroom fireplace into 
a foundry, making finished working models of engines, 
metallic mirrors and scientific apparatus. 

Even as a lad he was very industrious. After fif- 
teen he turned everything into the direction of the pro- 
fession that he had decided upon for himself; that of 
engineering. He made journeys to see noted engines 
or processes ; made drawings of unusual designs ; sought 
acquaintance with successful engineers ; saved all his 
spare earnings to attend technical lectures at the univer- 
sity. By nineteen his little models of engines had be- 
come real working engines used in neighboring mills. 
He even constructed a steam road wagon that carried 
six persons successfully — for the Scottish Society of 
Arts. 

Before he was twenty he had determined to be a 
mechanical engineer, and having heard of Henry 
Alaudsley, the greatest of the early machine builders, 
was taken to London by his father. 

At first Maudsley refused to receive him, but later 
when he saw the beautifully finished drawings and 
models he had made, admitted him not as an apprentice, 
but as a persona! assistant in his private experiments. 

He stayed there two years, until after the death of 
Maudsley, then deliberately decided to go into business 
for himself. 

He had but little money, perhaps $300. He set about 

230 



Nasmyth. 



making his own machine tools. When these were ready 
be calmly and modestly went first to Liverpool and then 
to Manchester, met the best men of each place, and talked 
over the possibilities in each city. 

He quietly refused all offers of aid, decided on Man- 
chester, leased one floor of a factory and began work. 

In three years the great weight of machinery on 
his floor began to crash through onto his glass-making 
neighbor below. He bought a large lot of land outside 
the city, bordered by canal, railroad and highway, erect- 
ed commodious foundry and machine shop. 

He specialized on engines, boilers and tools for 
working iron and steel. 

He was fortunate in his times. He was cotempor- 
ary with the introduction of railroads and steamships, 
and the consequent extraordinary demand for engines 
and machine tools. 

He was fitted and equipped to supply this demand, 
inventing, perfecting, constructing, as occasion de- 
manded. 

There followed from his inventive mind a steady 
succession of special machine tools, engines, boilers, 
locomotives, cranes, lathes, planers, shaping machines, 
drilling apparatus, and most remarkable of all, the steam 
hammer. 

The circumstances about its invention are interest- 
ing. The Great Western steamship had been success- 
ful and it was determined to build the Great Britain, even 
larger still. Mr. Nasmyth was called upon to furnish 
machine tools large enough to construct the immense 
engines required. This he did with entire approval. It 
was quite natural, therefore, when they found to their 
dismay that not a forge hammer in England powerful 

231 



Nasmyth. 



enough to forge the 30-inch paddle shaft, to refer the 
difficulty to him. The result of his thinking was a 
sketch in 1839 of the steam hammer, but the change 
from paddles to screw propulsion for the Great Britain 
did away with the necessity of the shaft so that the ham- 
mer was not constructed until a year or two later. 

This was first built without permission in France by 
a government engineer to whom he had shown his 
sketches. Once constructed, it was universally adopted, 
and is to-day practically the same as his original design. 

His steam pile-driver did in four and one-half min- 
utes what the old drop did in twelve hours and revolution- 
ized the building of wharves, docks and foundations. 

His inventive genius had a wide range. It included 
improvements in mechanics ; applying steam power to 
canal traction ; superheating steam ; measuring expansion 
of solid bodies ; method of casting composition ; the flexi- 
ble shaft; safety ladles for foundries; the invention of 
steam and torpedo rams ; the w^edge-shaped water valve * 
a hydraulic press ; improved method of welding iron ; the 
skew face punch for large work ; hydraulic punch ; upright 
form of engine ; the turntable, trunnion vision telescope ; 
link valve motion ; method of drilling tunnels in rock ; 
chilled cast iron shot ; and preceded Bessemer with a pro- 
cess of steel making. 

He had exceptional mechanical judgment. He saw 
the simplest way to a desired end, discarding unerringly 
all superfluous material and movements. 

His inherited judgment of eye, his boyhood practice 
in handicraft, his early training under Maudsley gave him 
high rank as an engineer. 

Beside these he made discoveries in astronomy, 
geology and archaeology. He traveled widely in Europe, 

232 



Nasmyth. 



giving advice to government departments and was much 
sought in his ow^n country for consultation on mechanical 
improvements in military and naval construction. 

In his autobiography (from which these facts are 
taken), there is not a hint of personal or professional 
jealousy from cover to cover. Even when others ap- 
propriated his ideas without credit, he found only cause 
for satisfaction that his ideas were approved. 

His genial, art-loving nature and enthusiasm made 
him a charming companion. His engineering skill, 
scientific attainments and ancestral connections gave him 
a wide range of social acquaintance in England and the 
Continent. 

Having made a reasonable fortune from his busi- 
ness, he retired at the early age of forty-eight, to de- 
vote himself to his "hobbies,'' astronomy, art and in- 
vention. 

In astronomy he was especially interested. His 
drawings of the moon and sun spots and discussions as 
to the nature of their surfaces awakened much discus- 
sion at the time among the best astronomers of the day. 
He painted some pictures that were valuable from the 
minute care given to details of architecture and furnish- 
ings. He also' made interesting contributions in archae- 
ology, especially as to the origin of cuneiform inscrip- 
tions. He died in 1890, aged eighty-two years. 

T T T 



233 




Alfried Krupp 
181'2-1887 



234 



Alfried Krupp. 

T T T 

Extraordinary application and dogged perseverance 
explain the success of Alfried Krupp. He is an excellent 
illustration in history of the wisdom of the Nazarene's 
philosophy, ''Go sell that thou hast .... and come, 
take up thy cross/' Many a life of promise has come to 
nothing from scattering its forces. Alfried Krupp sur- 
passed expectations by concentration and persistence. 

His inheritance was fortunate. His father left him 
not wealth, but the spirit and incentive for severest toil. 
Blood and heredity told in his case as in few others. His 
ancestors were men of wealth and force. His great- 
grandmother bought an abandoned iron works and 
brought it to activity for a time. His grandfather was a 
successful merchant, but died young.- His father was 
brought up by a capable mother and this energetic grand- 
mother. 

Although the larger iron works were disposed of, 
the father continued experiments to make cast steel. This 
was from 1800-1815, at the time when England alone had 
the secret of making steel. To make the situation worse, 
Napoleon's embargo cut ofif entirely the supply from all 
Europe. Alfried's father began with wealth. He is said 
to have been an austere man, of iron will, rendered gloomy 
from continued ill success. Little by little his wealth dis- 
appeared. He gave up his fine mansion to live in a 

235 



Krupp. 



laborer's cottage beside his forge. After weary years he 
learned the secret of steel making, but it came too late ; at 
the early age of thirty-nine he died of a broken heart. 

Before he died he gave the secret of his steel to Al- 
fried, who was then only fourteen years old, and willed 
that he assume at once, under the oversight of the mother, 
the management of the business. 

That was his heritage, a memory of wealth followed 
by increasing cares and ever deepening poverty ; a father 
devoted to what he thought to be his duty — single of aim, 
indomitable and persistent. The lines of these qualities 
were woven together in Alfried to make the fabric of his 
genius. 

He was wise beyond his years, and, guided by his en- 
ergetic mother, took up the burden his father had so wear- 
ily laid down, with a prospect only of hardest toil and 
small returns. For twenty-five years he worked unremit- 
tingly, by daylight at the anvil and forge, by lamplight 
at his accounts and books. For years he could hardly pay 
the wages of his men, let alone any profit to himself. 
After twenty-five years the clouds of care began to break 
away, and henceforth success came in almost geometric 
progression — the marvel of the world. 

Alfried Krupp was born at Essen in 1812. In 1826 
he began his life-work, with only two helpers, without 
experience, strength, capital or credit. At first he made 
tools, tanners' scrapers, mint dies and tools. He sought 
from the very first to make everything that he used him- 
self, a course that he followed to the end, and that ex- 
plains the wide ramification of the present industry at 
Essen. 

His first noteworthy invention was a cast-steel roller 
die that he patented in Germany, France and England.' 

236 



Krupp. 



The sale of the English patent was the first reward worth 
mentioning that came to him. During these early years 
he made various journeys, working for longer or shorter 
times in other iron works, to increase his knowledge, 
spending some time in England, and always returning en- 
riched by experience, which he at once put to use at Essen. 
He sought to become acquainted with technical experts 
and arrange for an exchange of experience. 

In 1832 he had ten workmen, in 1845 h^ h^^^ ^^^ ^^ 
work, which number fell off to ^2 in the trying year of 
1847-1848, but ever after this there was increase. 

In 1844 Krupp received a gold medal for the excel- 
lence of his steel. 

In 1845 he began to make cannon of cast steel that 
were of acknowledged merit, but were only looked upon 
as curiosities. In 185 1 came the general recognition of 
his genius. In this year he exhibited at London a block 
of cast steel weighing two tons and a half. This was un- 
precedented, and placed Krupp at once at the head of the 
world's steel-makers. 

It is to be remembered that hitherto steel had been 
made only in small crucibles. Bessemer's method came 
into use seven years later, and the Siemens open-hearth 
process still later. 

Krupp ever after kept his lead in casting huge masses 
of steel. He invented a method for forging weldless* car- 
wheel tires, and in 1857 made his first cannon on a gov- 
ernment contract, for Egypt. 

In 1 86 1 he invented the breech-loading mechanism for 
cannon that was at once adopted by Prussia, and, follow- 
ing, by all civilized nations. This was an epoch mark in 
the history of the works. 

While Krupp very early adopted the Bessemer pro- 

237 



Krupp. 



cess for rails and structural material, and the Siemens 
process for armor, tires, cranks and axles, he always used 
crucible steel for his cannon, a choice that time wholly 
vindicated. 

He steadily increased the capacity of his plant to pro- 
duce and handle large and larger ingots. 

In 1867 he exhibited a 14-inch gun weighing 10 tons, 
and later one weighing 60 tons, and still later a 120- ton. 

During his lifetime he made above 20,000 cannon. 
To forge these huge masses he introduced great steam 
hammers and furnaces. His SO-ton hammer was for 
years the wonder of Europe. 

His inventions covered almost everything in ord- 
nance, firing mechanism, projectiles, gun carriages and ar- 
mor plate, also many for the manufacture and working of 
steel for special purposes. 

The characteristic of Krupp's work was always its 
magnitude — in product and capacity. This characteristic 
has been fully maintained by his son and successor. 

His two helpers in 1826 were multiplied ten thou- 
sand fold in fifty years. His single forge had become a 
score of blast furnaces, hundreds of boilers, engines and 
hammers ; thousands of furnaces and machine tools and 
miles of railroads. The little plant at Essen had sent out 
runners that had taken root in far distant places — mines 
for coal and iron, clay and limestone, smelting works, 
proving grounds and distributing centers, while his own 
steamships carried the product to the end of the earth. 
And the dogs of war were never loosed without barking 
from Krupp cannon, whether it be on the confines of 
Paris, the jungles of Africa or the lonely stretches of the 
great wall of China. 

But the best of Krupp was his sympathy for his army 

238 



Krupp. 



of workmen. His own trying apprenticeship in the school 
of life left him very solicitous for the comfort of others. 

His first profits went to better their condition, and 
with the enlargement of the works came model tenements, 
co-operative stores, recreation halls, insurance benefits and 
old-age pensions. 

Sometimes his efforts more than bordered on pater- 
nalism, but they were always genuine and loving. Al- 
fried Krupp was sincere, modest and sunny. He pre- 
served the old hut where he began life, and showed it with 
unaffected simplicity to the kings and great men who were 
his guests in later years. He was as proud of that as of 
his gigantic hammers, his glowing furnaces and his army 
of busy, contented workmen. 

The true spirit of the man shows forth in the inscrip- 
tion he had placed on the walls of the old cottage where he 
began his work: *Tifty years ago this laborer's cottage 
was the refuge of my parents. May no workman of ours 
ever experience the sorrows that then enshrouded us! 
For twenty-five years the issue was in doubt, an issue 
which has since then, by degrees so astonishingly re- 
warded the privations, the struggles, the confidence and 
the perseverance of the past. • May this example stimulate 
others in distress, may it encourage the respect for small 
domiciles and sympathy for the greater cares that often 
dwell therein. 

'The goal of labor should be the common good, for 
that labor brings blessings, for that to labor is to pray. 

''May each one of us, from the highest to the lowest, 
with like conviction strive to found and secure his fortune 
gratefully, modestly. Thus would my highest wish be 
fulfilled." 

His son had been in control of the works some years 
before his death in 1887, when seventy-five years of age. 

239 




Charles Babbagc 

1791-1871 



240 



Charles Babbage. 



T T T 

This short story will be divided into two parts, on 
account of the space necessary to describe, even in the 
briefest manner, the inventions of this most remarkable 
man. Very little is known about his home life, although 
he lived very recently; the invention so far transcended 
the man in importance, that the details of his life seem to 
have dropped out of sight. 

Charles Babbage was born on the 26th of December, 
1 79 1, at Totnes, Devonshire, England. His parents were 
wealthy and sent him to a private school to be educated. 

He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1810. He 
early showed a marked interest in mathematics, and it is 
recorded that he was familiar with the works of the great 
mathematicians before he went to college. He graduated 
from Trinity in 18 14 with high rank in mathematics, then 
traveled and continued his studies privately. His first 
published essay was on the Calculus of Functions, in the 
Philosophical Transactions of 181 5. He was made a fel- 
low of the Royal Society in 1816, and labored with Hers- 
chel and Peacock to raise the standard of mathematical 
instruction in England. 

He early noticed the number and importance of 
errors in astronomy and other calculations due to errors 
in mathematical tables. The first idea of a calculating 
machine came to him in 1812 or 1813, while still a student. 

241 



Babbj 



age. 

Some years later he went to Paris to study their methods 
for computing and printing the now celebrated French 
tables of powers, roots, circumferences, areas, sines, tan- 
gents, logarithms, etc. There he met several of the most 
noted mathematicians of the day. He bought a copy, at a 
high price, of Didot's natural sines, carried to the twen- 
tieth place in figures. By the permission of the French 
officials, he copied by hand to the fourteenth place, from 
the tables of logarithms deposited in the Observatory, 
every 500th number from 10,000 to 100,000. 

All scientific callings require these tables, but especial- 
ly astronomers and navigators. These tables are now 
seen in every engineer's hand-book, and we little appre- 
ciate the labor and expense involved in their preparation. 
It is of interest to consider the extreme care that was 
taken to prepare them. The work of calculating these 
tables was entrusted at Paris to three corps of calculators,- 
the first section investigated the various formulae and 
selected the ones that could most readily be adapted to 
simple numerical calculation by many individuals. The 
second section consisted of seven or eight trained students, 
who converted the algebraic formulae into numbers and 
tabulated and reviewed the calculations of the third group. 
The third section consisted of sixty to eighty persons, who 
simply added and subtracted the equations given them. 
Their labors occupied several years and the results were 
bound in 17 folio volumes. In these tables absolute ac- 
curacy is essential, and that is very, very rarely attained. 
In a set of logarithms stereotyped by Mr. Babbage, the 
proof was compared number by number with other tables 
seven times, nevertheless, in the last reading thirty-two er- 
rors were discovered. After stereotyping the proof was 
compared figure by figure four times and eight more er- 

242 



Babbage. 



rors discovered. Other tables, after having been in use 
for years, have been found to contain hundreds of errors. 

Becoming intensely interested in these tables and the 
methods for preparing and copying them, Mr. Babbage, 
as early as 1819, gave careful thought to the invention of 
a machine that would calculate and print them without the 
intervention of human hands and, therefore, without error. 
By 1822 he had made a small machine that would calculate 
simple formulae, such as multiplication tables and squares 
up to eight figures. 

In a letter of this same year to the President of the 
Royal Society, he not only describes this machine, but adds 
that he had already designed a method for printing fault- 
lessly the results, and that he also had in mind machines 
to multiply, extract roots, and various other operations. 

The machine that was constructed at this time was 
very simple, consisting of but few parts, but these were 
repeated many times. On trial, it was found possible to 
calculate from 30 to 40 numbers a minute, which was 
faster than a man could copy them down. He claimed 
that his machine only needed to be constructed on a larger 
scale to calculate any and all tables that were character- 
ized by regular differences between succeeding terms, and 
to add printing mechanism that would produce and record 
absolutely faultless tables. 

He called this first machine a Difference Engine, be- 
cause it produced successive terms of a table automatically^ 
by adding the requisite differences to the last term. 

To illustrate in the table of squares, i — 4 — 9 — 16 — 
25, etc. 

By subtraction we get the first order of differences, 
3—5—7—9, etc. 

243 



Babb 



age. 



By subtraction again we get the second order of 
differences, 2 — 2 — 2, etc. 

Now, to find any term, we have only to add the con- 
stant 2 to the last known difiference of the first order to 
the last known square, to produce the following square : 

To illustrate, what is the square of 11 ? The square of 
10=100, the square of 9=81, 100 — 81 = 19 2+19+ 
100=121, the square of 11. This is comparatively a sim- 
ple table. There are tables in common use that have five, 
six, and even seven orders of differences, before the con- 
stant is found. J\Ir. Babbage, in 1822, wrote to the Prime 
Minister of England and asked Government assistance in 
constructing a Difference Engine that could calculate up 
to twenty places of figures, and that would also print auto- 
matically the results. 

The Treasury referred the request to the Royal So- 
ciety, for an opinion as to the merits of the invention. 
They reported promptly that it was ''fully adequate to the 
attainment of the objects proposed by the inventor." 
Soon after, in 1823, the sum of $7,500 was appropriated to 
this end. 

i\Ir. Babbage at once set to work to construct the en- 
larged and automatic Difference Engine. Draftsmen were 
set to work making the drawings. ]\Ir. Joseph Clement, 
out of iMaudsley's men, was given charge of the mechan- 
ical part, and for four years the work proceeded. Tools 
had to be designed and constructed to meet the demand 
for extreme accuracy, even workmen had to be trained 
to a nicety of execution before unheard of. 

In 1827 the expense incurred had amounted to 
$17,000, of which ]\Ir. Babbage had advanced nearly $10,- 
000. At this time his health was poor and he went to 
Italy, leaving minute instructions to be followed in build- 

244 



Babbage. 



ing the machine and placed $5,000 at their disposal. Per- 
ceiving that the probable expense would be considerable, 
he asked the Government for another grant. Lord Wel- 
lington inquired of the Royal Society for an investigation 
as tO' whether the project was worth proceeding with. 
The Society gave ''their decided opinion in the affirma- 
tive.'' In 1829 the Government made another grant of 
$7,500. By this time the expense had reached $35,000. 
Lord Wellington then personally examined the machine, 
and the Government made a grant of $7,500 more, with 
the suggestion that the calculating part be separated from 
the printing device. 

In 1830 still another grant of $15,000 was made by 
the Government. In 1832 the Government constructed a 
fire proof workshop near Mr. Babbage's residence to con- 
tain the costly drawings and machinery which had accu- 
mulated during the years. In 1833 a portion of the ma- 
chine was put together, which completely justified the ex- 
pectation. It could calculate, and did so with absolute 
accuracy, tables of three orders of differences up to six- 
teen figures. 

Meanwhile difficulties arose between Mr. Babbage 
and Mr. Clement, who had charge of the construction. 
The latter had an increasing sense of the value of his part 
of the work, and his charges grew apace. At length 
Mr. Babbage secured consent to have Government en- 
gineers examine all accounts before being paid. There 
being some delay in paymets, Mr. Babbage was accus- 
tomed to advance money. In 1834, he declined to do this 
longer, and the result was that Mr. Clement withdrew, 
taking with him many of the best workmen and all the 
special tools that he had designed and built, which ac- 
cording to the custom of the day he had a right to do, 

245 



Babbage. 



even though the Government had paid for them. Then 
there were vexatious delays, as to whether the Government 
would meet Mr. Clement's terms or secure some one else 
for the construction. 

Meanwhile an entirely new idea came to Mr. Babbage 
by which he could construct a calculating machine of far 
greater range than the Difference Engine. Mr. Babbage 
felt that it was not right to ask the Government to com- 
plete the first machine without making known to them his 
new discover}^ Perhaps also, and it would be quite nat- 
ural, he rather hoped that the Government would abandon 
the old and start at once the construction of the new. At 
any rate, while the question was being discussed, political 
questions became involved and the matter was not de- 
cided until 1842, when it was definitely given up. The 
part of the machine that was completed was sent to the 
Museum of King's College, London, and later sent to 
South Kensington and the uncompleted parts distributed 
among friends and institutions, as souvenirs. 

The entire cost of this machine to the Government, 
exclusive of the fire proof building, had been $80,000. 
Not one penny came to Mr. Babbage as a recompense 
for his labors of twenty years. In addition to what the 
Government had expended on the construction, Mr. Bab- 
bage had also expended fully as much more and consider- 
able sums for personal expenses, experiments, travel, and 
research. Although this machine was never completed, 
it has been thought by some that the money had been 
well expended, because of the habits of extreme accuracy 
and precision that were introduced into English machine 
construction, by the many workmen and draftsmen who 
received their training under Babbage and Clement and 

246 



Babbage. 

then passed on to other shops, carrying with them the 
skill and method there acquired. 

The construction of machine tools was certainly 
greatly enriched by the necessities involved in the con- 
struction of this invention. 

From 1828 to 1839, Mr. Babbage had been Lucasian 
Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. He had made 
several journeys to the Continent and written many let- 
ters and essays. One book, published in 1834, called 
"The Economy of Machines and Manufactures," 
summed up his consideration of the manufactures of the 
time. This book was widely printed and read for sev- 
eral decades, and did much to extend the modern sys- 
tem of manufacture by machinery. 

Once only, in 1832, he tried to enter public life, but 
was defeated. 



The Analytical Calculating Machine. 

It was not decided by the Government of England 
to discontinue the construction of the Difference Machine 
until 1842, almost ten years after work upon it had ceased. 
Meanwhile Mr. Babbage had given much thought and ex- 
pense in perfecting his new and vastly more complicated 
calculating machine. 

The Difference Engine was designed to calculate 
tables by simple addition of the proper differences. The 
Analytical Engine was designed to work out the algebraic 
development of any formula whose law was known and 
to convert it into numbers. In fact, Mr. Babbage de- 
clared that if constructed it could solve any algebraic 
problem the successive steps of which could be conceived 

247 



Babbage. 



of by the human mind, do it automatically and print the 
result without the possibility of error. 

In a letter Mr. Babbage thus describes it : 

''It is intended to include lOO numbers, susceptible 
of changing — each may consist of 25 figures * * * 
any given function which can be expressed by addition, 
subtraction, multiplication, division, extraction of roots, 
or the elevation of powers, the machine will calculate its 
numerical value ; it will afterward substitute this value in 
place of V or any other variable and will calculate the 
second function with respect to V ; it will reduce to tables 
almost all equations of finite differences.'' 

In the Difference Engine the exact method for add- 
ing was immaterial because a simplification of it only 
affected one or twO' hundred parts, but in the Analytical 
Engine, the mechanism for performing the elementary 
operations of adding, subtraction, dividing and multiply- 
ing became so important that any change affected thou- 
sands upon thousands of parts. In fact the machine 
could only exist by inventing for it a mechanical method 
of addition of the utmost simplicity. It is said that Mr. 
Babbage and his assistants designed and partly con- 
structed over twenty different methods before the de- 
sired simplicity was attained. 

The system of addition finally decided upon was 
extremely simple and yet it not only added all digits at 
once, but included in the total all amounts carried and 
what is more wonderful, had an ''anticipating carriage," 
that included in the total all the amounts carried of the 
carryings. Thus any addition could be performed auto- 
matically at one operation, without the necessity of a sub- 
sequent operation to include the carryings. 

The engine was not a combination of machines, the 

248 



Babbage. 



one to add, another to subtract, another to divide, but 
was designed as one machine, so arranged that any oper- 
ation, or any combination of operations, could be per- 
formed automatically at will. It consisted in the main 
of two sets of columns, the one called the mill and the 
other the store. 

The mill consisted of- a series of columns made up 
of discs, into which was placed the quantities about to be 
operated. The store consisted of a larger number of 
columns into which all the variables about to be operated 
upon were placed, and intO' which all those quantities, 
which had arisen by result of other operations were 
placed. 

He thus separated the operations from the objects 
acted upon. 

''All the shifts which have to take place, such as 
carrying, borrowing, etc. — changing addition into sub- 
traction, or shifting the decimal place, are affected by a 
system of rotating cams, acting upon or actuated by bell 
cranks, tangs, clutches, escapements. These clutches and 
bell cranks control the process effected, or being them- 
selves suitably directed, secure that the proper process 
should be performed on the proper subject matter and 
duly recorded or used as required.'' 

The columns that make up the store contained a 
series of wheels that received the results of operations 
performed by the mill and served as a store of numbers 
yet to be used. The wheels gear into a series of racks, 
which in turn are operated by cards. 

These cards were the new thought that came to Mr. 
Babbage when he was constructing the Dift'erence En- 
gine and which brought him visions of the possibilities 
of the new machine and led him to lose interest in the old. 

249 



Babbi 



.ge. 



The cards themselves were no new invention. They 
were invented by Jacquard to control the introduction of 
threads in weaving brocade. It flashed into Mr. Bab- 
bage's mind that he could use these cards to indicate 
successive operations in a calculating machine that, with 
this equipment, would have a power over complicated 
arithmetical operations that would be nearly unbounded. 

These cards were perforated by different combina- 
tions of holes and were then linked together as a chain 
and arranged to pass successively over a set of wires. 
The wires, corresponding to the holes, would drop 
through and indicate by suitable connections the desired 
operations of the mill. 

Having the machine, all that human brains are called 
upon to do is to perforate successive cards and then 
operate the machine, when the desired opeiations would 
follow without possibility of error. 

In the Analytical Engine there were two principal 
sets of these cards, one to indicate operations, one to 
indicate the columns of variables upon which the results 
are to be presented. 

These cards thus arrange the various parts of the 
machine and then execute the processes. 
Illustration, 
(i) mx-\-ny^=d 
(2) m'x-\-n'y=d' 
dn — d n 

(3) ^-= 

d'm — dm' 

(4) y= 

mn' — ni'n 
To find the vaUie of x and y eleven successive op- 

250 



erations must be performed, as indicated in the following 
tables : 





S 


Cards of the 


Variable cards. 




Columns 


1 


operations. 


















on which 


o 


OJ IB 


A 










are in- 
scribed the 


1 


SI 


sg 


Columns acted 


Columns 
that receive 


Indication of 


Statement of results. 


primitive 


o 


h c 


o"7i 


on by each 


the result 


change of value 




data. 


S3 


^•H 


^S. 


operation. 


of each 


en any column. 






Fi 


a 2 


^° 




operation. 








3 

z 


^^ 


2 










'Vo = ^ 


1 


1 


X 


»Vo X »V, = 


'Ve 


\1V4 =>V4 / 


^6 =mn' 


iVi = « 


2 


>. 


X 


'V3 X »Vi = 


•v? • 


jiv'^iv'l 


»V7=wi'« 


iV, = rf 


3 


>» 


X 


'V2 X 'V4 = 


'V, 


f ^V2 = ^JV^ 1 


»V3 =rfn' 


% = >«' 


4 


» 


X 


IV5 X ^v, = 


'V9 


i 'V5 = ^v^ 1 


IV3 =rf'n 


% = n' 


5 


» 


X 


^Vo X ^5 = 


'V,„ 




>V,o=d'^ 


»V, = d' 


6 


>» 


X 


•V2 X 'V3 = 


'V„ 


1 1V3 = OV3 / 


>Vji = rfw' 




7 


2 




iVe -% = 


'V,2 


VV7=ov / 


iVi2=w2n'— 7r/n 




8 


>» 


- 


IV3-IV, = 


'Vl3 




iV,3 = rfn'-d'7i 




9 


„ 


- 


%o-%i = 


'V,4 




iV,4 = rf'w-rf7n' 




10 


3 


-^ 


^V,3-f-^Vj2 = 


'V,5 


PV,3=0Vj3| 


mil— VI n 




11 


)> 


-f- 


•Vi4-^%2 = 


'V,6 




... d'm — dm' 


1 


2 


3 


4 


5 


6 


7 


8 



Cards for these variables must be arranged and cards 
for the eleven operations and then all that remained was 
to place the mechanism in motion. It is thus seen that 
anything in the way of calculating that the human mind 
is capable of precisely defining, this machine would be 
capable of performing. 

Anyone at all versed in designing machinery will 
recognize the difficulties involved in keeping a clear con- 
ception of the individual motions of this maze, of "wheels 
within wheels/' In order that he might have a clearer 
insight into the various motions, Mr. Babbage invented a 
system of mechanical notation, by means of which he 

251 



Babb 



age. 



could chart the syncronous motions of every part of even 
the most compHcated mechanism. The motion of each 
part was represented by a vertical line, whose length was 
divided into units of motion. On each side of this line 
were various symbols for direction, nature (intermittent 
or regular), source, etc. These tables of notation were 
carried to such refinement that in designing it w^as always 
possible by laying a straight edge across the chart to see 
at a glance the exact position and status of every part at 
that instant. 

It is said that at one stage it was desirable to shorten 
the time in which a certain operation was performed. 
The constructor had a model of the part before him, 
while Mr. Babbage resorted to his tables. The opera- 
tion required the time of twelve revolutions. After pro- 
longed study, they found ways to reduce the time to eight 
revolutions, then the constructor gave it up, but shortly 
after Mr. Babbage discovered new combinations by which 
it w^as crowded into four revolutions. 

For twenty years Mr. Babbage continued work on 
this invention in his own house and at his own expense. 
He continuously employed draftsmen and mechanics, and 
took much time in explaining his designs to visiting ex- 
perts, mathematicians, and philosophers. 

Tt was no dream of a crank. It was the consum- 
mate result of the life-long thinking of the greatest genius 
i^or this sort of thing that the world has ever seen. The 
designs were examined by the wisest philosophers and 
the foremost engineers of his day, who again and again 
gave commendation and endorsement to the worth of his 
plans. 

To be sure, only a small part ot the mill was ever 
built, just sufficient to show the method of adding and 



Babbage. 



subtracting and the anticipating carriage. Part was 
made in gun metal mounted on steel; but the greater part 
of a kind of pewter hardened by zinc and moulded by 
pressure. All the principles were either drawn or con- 
sti*ucted in models. 

A great many experiments were made and special 
tools designed for making with sufficient precision the 
multitude of little wheels, which, in some cases, amounted 
to 50,000, and the various methods of construction were 
determined upon. Over 400 drawings were made,- of 
which some thirty were group plans, some of which were 
of elaborate complication. There are five volumes of 
sketches, and 400 to 500 folio pages comprising a com- 
plete mechanical notation. 

There was very little description made of it. The 
philosophers were more interested in speculation over its 
mathematical possibilities and Mr. Babbage was too' busy 
designing until the infirmities of old age prevented him. 
He once, however, spoke of 1,000 columns with 50 wheels 
each in the store alone, and, besides, many thousand 
wheels mounted on axles in columns for the mill and a 
vast machinery of cams and cranks for the control. 

It was a marvel of mechanical ingenuity and re- 
source, in detail good, but, on the whole only a theoretical 
possibility. Probably no man but Mr. Babbage himself 
ever understood its working. 

M. Menabrea, an Italian Military Engineer, made a 
profound study of it in 1842, but admits in his careful de- 
scription that the time at his disposal was gone before 
he had begun to master its more abstruse possibilities. 

The Analytical Engine was invented in 1834, and 
it was 1848 before Mr. Babbage felt that he had mastered 
its main design. In 1852 he consulted the Government 

253 



Babbi 



age. 

to see if they would construct it, and in 1854 he aban- 
doned work upon it. 

He had doubtless expended over $100,000 of his 
private fortune on the two machines. Those who were 
cognizant of the state of machine construction during 
these years aver that the money expended was more than 
repaid in the advance caused in the art of constructing 
machines of precision. No small credit should be given 
to Mr. Babbage for this exceedingly practical result of 
his painstaking efforts. 

The printed works of Mr. Babbage comprise over 
80 titles, nearly all of which are essays on mathematical 
and philosophical subjects. He died in London in 1871. 

T T T ^ 



254 





Sir Joseph Whitworth 
1803-1887 



256 



Sir Joseph Whitworth 

T T T 

Carlyle defines genius as ''an infinite capacity for 
taking pains/' He was a friend of Sir Joseph Whit- 
worth, and may have learned this definition from ac- 
quaintance with him, who was most patient and pains- 
taking. 

He was not at all versatile or ingenious, but rather 
studious, deliberate and persevering. His few inventions 
and many productions were all the logical sequence by 
induction from experience, experiment and careful study. 
He was born in 1803, son of a schoolmaster, and, after a 
fair education for the times, he went to work in a cotton 
mill when fourteen years old. At eighteen he ran away 
tO' Manchester and began his machine-shop practice. At 
twenty-one he went to Maudsley's, in London, the best 
machine shop of the day. In these days there were al- 
most no machine tools, and nicety of workmanship was 
almost wholly dependent on the skill of the machinist. 

Whitworth, with his exceptional training, recognized 
the necessity of fine machine tools if accurate workman- 
ship was to be cheapened and expedited. He saw at once 
that machines could produce no better work than that 
which marked their own construction. He discerned that 
the plane surface was the basis of all excellence in ma- 
chinery, and set himself to produce a plane surface as 
near perfect as possible. In 1830 he produced the first 

257 



Whitworth, 

set of really plane surfaces. The old method universally 
followed was to rub tw^o plates together — his method 
was to produce as perfect a straight edge as he could and 
then use it to test the work of hand scraping. He made 
his first true planes when with Maudsley. From these 
the reproduction of plane surfaces was comparatively 
easy. 

In 1833 he went into business on his own account in 
Manchester. To make these surfaces he designed the 
well-known planer that is to-day much as he originally 
made it. The ''slide" principle involved in the planer 
and many other modern machines seems simple, and few 
are aware that its discovery as a mechanical movement is 
within the memory of men now living, and was depend- 
ent for its success upon the manufacture of plane sur- 
faces with mechanical precision. 

Whitworth next gave his attention to perfecting and 
standardizing the pitch of screws. Every manufacturer 
had his own shape and pitch, with resulting confusion. 
He made a large collection of screws and carefully se- 
lected standards. Then he set about making a perfect 
guide-screw, and kept at it for six months. It was thirty 
feet long, two threads to the inch. That for which he 
contended — a generally-accepted standard — is now ac- 
cepted the world over. 

In England the Whitworth standard is still in use, 
but in the United States the common 60° pitch with flat- 
tened top and bottom, has taken its place. 

It is a great debt the mechanical world owes to 
Joseph Whitworth for the true plane, the slide and the 
screw. Much credit is also due him for his instruments 
for exact measurements. He made a standard yard, and 
his workshop measuring machine could distinctly gauge 

258 



Whitworth. 

to the forty-thousandth part of an inch. In another ma- 
chine he made, the one-millionth part could be noted. So 
accurate was this machine that the heat of a finger-touch 
was found to be disturbing. At a time when "a bare 
thirty-second'' was the smallest unit of measurement, his 
common use of ten-thousandths was certainly revolu- 
tionary. 

Most of his important machine tools were invented 
and perfected between 1833 and 1850, and are the fore- 
runners of the numberless machine tools of to-day. By 
185 1 he was counted the foremost machine constructor 
of his time. 

The outbreak of the Crimean war brought a radical 
change in his afifairs. The Government needed a large 
number of rifles, and found that it would require twenty 
years to make them by the old hand method. They asked 
Whitworth to make for them a complete set of special 
machine tools for their manufacture. He refused to do 
so unless they would first authorize him to make extensive 
investigations to know for certain the principles that con- 
ditioned the size, shape, pitch and proportions of bore, 
rifling and bullets. At first they thought it an unneces- 
sary expense, but later permitted him to do so. 

He erected a covered range with windows only on 
the south, a movable target and facilities for placing 
paper screens at regular distances across the whole range. 
Then he tested every combination of size, length and 
rifling of barrel; proportions of projectiles and charge of 
powder. After each he carefully measured the holes in 
the paper screens and noted in which the holes were 
clean cut and in line, in which and how often the pro- 
jectile had turned over or gone in a spiral. 

As a result of these elaborate experiments he es- 

259 



Whitworth. 

tablished as best the following proportions : Bore .45, 
polygonal rifling with a pitch of i inch to 20 inches, and 
a projectile whose length is y/2 times its diameter. 

These proportions were embodied in the Whitworth 
rifle that proved itself vastly better than anything hitherto 
produced. 

I\Iany governments at once either purchased his rifles 
or adopted his standards and among private concerns his 
principles were universally adopted. 

But British officialdom was too hide-bound to adopt 
it for long years afterward. In 1874 they adopted the 
]\Iartini-Henry rifle as the standard^ which was con- 
structed on the general dimensions that Whitworth had 
proven to be correct twenty years before. 

He believed that these same proportions held good 
upon cannon, and from i860 to 1872 made many valuable 
improvements in proportions and shape of bore, and pro- 
jectiles, composition of gun powder, rifling, and flat 
head projectiles for penetrating armor at angles and be- 
low the water line. 

By i860 he was manufacturing high-grade cannon 
having an unprecedented range. Being dissatisfied with 
the strength of steel usually employed for this purpose, he 
began experiments to improve the quality. After mak- 
ing 2,500 experiments, extending over six or seven years, 
he succeeded in making the best steel that was ever made 
for this purpose, namely, crucible steel, hydraulically 
compressed, when in a fluid state, under a pressure of six 
tons to the square inch. Where Krupp cannon had an 
average life of 600 to 800 shots, Whitworth cannon were 
fired, under the same conditions, 3,500 times without a 
single mishap. His great propeller shafts, cast hollow 

260 



Whitworth. 

and compressed, showed also the same high strength and 
uniformity. 

In 1876 he produced an armor plate made up of con- 
centric rings of compressed steel that exhibited greatly 
increased resistance. 

In working out these results he designed a great 
variety of machinery, including the famous 8,000-ton 
hydraulic press for compressing ingots of fluid steel. 

In all this work of a massive kind he showed the 
same carefulness and nicety that characterized his earlier 
work on machine tools and measuring instruments. 

Sir Joseph Whitworth was impressed, as were many 
other thoughtful Englishmen, with the steadily decreasing 
prestige of British engineering. He saw the cause in her 
indifference to scientific and technical education, and to do 
his part toward improving the conditions, he set apart a 
fund of $500,000 to found a series of scholarships. This 
was in 1868, and to the end of his life, as one of the di- 
rectors of this fund, he gave thoughtful and conscientious 
attention to its distribution. This fund was much appre- 
ciated by the nation, and had a far-reaching effect in in- 
creasing interest in scientific study. 

He also endeavored to make the success of his works 
benefit his employees, and to this end incorporated his 
business, the shares being reserved entirely for himself, 
his foremen and workmen. It was made especially easy 
for his poorest workmen to acquire shares on credit. He 
required, however, that any one leaving his employ should 
sell back any shares he might hold, to the corporation. 

Joseph Whitworth was always very careful to know 
what was right, and then had a strong and unbending will 
in holding to his conclusions. He was a man of simple 

261 



Whitworth. 

and healthy tastes, taking equal interest in engineering 
and his gardening. 

He was a highly honored member of the leading 
scientific societies, before whom he presented some half 
dozen epoch-marking essays. He was honored by 
knighthood in 1869. 

He died in 1887, leaving the bulk of his large estate 
to certain friends who were acquainted with his wishes, 
and who have, since his death, distributed no less than 
$3,000,000 to charitable and educational purposes. 

Throughout his long life he faithfully illustrated a 
favorite motto : 

''He is strong who is foresighted." 

▼ T T 



262 




Sir Henry Bessemer 

I813-1898 



264 



Sir Henry Bessemer. 

T T T 

The father of Henry Bessemer was a notable in- 
ventor even before the French Revolution. He was in 
the employ of the French mint and had been made a mem- 
ber of the Academy of Science at the exceptionally early 
age of twenty-five, and was a favorite of Robespierre. 
Through a misunderstanding he excited the frenzy of the 
mob, was arrested and jailed, but escaped to the shores 
of England. 

Bessemer secured a position in the English mint, 
and his talents soon brought him enough money to buy 
a small estate at Charlton. Affter this his ingenuity had 
free scope, and to him are credited inventions in micro- 
scopes, and type-founding. This latter was a source of 
considerable profit, and together with a process for saving 
gold from the acids used for cleaning by the jewelers of 
his day, enabled him to bring up his children in some 
comfort. This inventive faculty was passed on to his 
younger son, Henry, in whom it was developed to such 
a degree that he came to be honored as the greatest in- 
ventor of his age. 

Henry Bessemer was born in 1813 at Charlton, and 
there passed his childhood and youth. His mechanical 
genius was early recognized and fostered by his father, 
who gave him every facility and sympathy. As early as 
sixteen years of age he had mastered the intricacies of 

265 



Bessemer. 

geometric engravings. At eighteen he went to London, 
and easily supported himself as an engraver on steel, and 
a modeler in clay. At nineteen he exhibited at the Royal 
Academy. At twenty he invented an inexpensive and 
accurate method for reproducing any embossing or re- 
lief. So impressed was he with the opportunity for fraud 
if it became generally known that he decided to keep it 
a secret, and a secret it remained. Then, his mind being 
on seals and fraud, he invented a self-canceling stamp 
that so recommended itself to the Stamp Office that it 
was adopted, and Bessemer was made superintendent at 
i6oo per year. Then Bessemer made a mistake. He ex- 
plained it to the young lady to whom he was engaged to 
be mjarried, who at once suggested the far simpler 
expedient of dating each stamp. Bessemer improved on 
the suggestion by inventing a system of movable dates 
that was at once adopted by the Stamp Office without as 
much as a ''thank you" to the inventors. It saved the 
Government a half million dollars a year, and they 
showed their gratitude by forthwith dispensing with the 
services of Bessemer. 

This was only the beginning of the shabby treat- 
ment which he received from the hands of the British 
Government, but it served one good turn. It cured him 
of giving his inventions away, and set him at work harder 
than ever to make up for lost time and money. 

Next he invented a machine for making patterns for 
figured velvet that was so successful that the product was 
used to furnish the state apartments at Windsor. Fol- 
lowing this was a type-casting machine, for which he ob- 
tained his first patent. It worked well, but was aban- 
doned because of the opposition of compositors. 

Then he turned his attention to the manufacture of 

266 



Bessemer. 

a bronze powder for gilding purposes. It took two years 
to accomplish this, but after that it was the financial 
foundation of all his after success. He locked the secret 
in the minds of only five trusty assistants, and the ma- 
chinery was secured from prying eyes. As long as he 
lived they made gilt powder at enormous profit, at times 
making as much as a thousand per cent. 

Then came a succession of inventions in the manu- 
facture of paints and sugar, in the construction of rail- 
way carriages, centrifugal pumps, and ordnance, of ap- 
paratus for ventilating mines, and in a process for grind- 
ing plate glass. He was now forty years of age. 

In 1853 came the beginning of the Crimean war, and 
Bessemer turned his thoughts to projectiles. He made 
inventions for firing and rotating elongated shot in the 
smoothbore guns of the day, but was simply pooh-poohed 
by the War Department. They never even tried them. 

Being in France, and his inventions being talked 
about, he was sent for by the Emperor, who was so much 
pleased with his results that he gave him open credit to 
continue his experiments for the benefit of France. 
While thus engaged, he was convinced that the real need 
was for a stronger material for the guns themselves, and 
so turned his attention to the manufacture of a cheap 
steel. Steel at that time was made by the Huntsman 
crucible process, as it had been made for a hundred years, 
selling for £50 to i6o per ton, which was thought to be a 
reasonable price. With an output of 50,000 tons per 
annum, England was in control of the world's market. 

Bessemer at this time knew nothing of metallurgy 
and was obliged to begin at the beginning. As usual he 
made a thorough study of the subject in all the books he 
could find, then from extensive visits to many of the best 



Bessemer. 

iron works and then he secured a small iron shop at St. 
Pancras, London, which he fitted up and devoted wholly 
to his experiments. At first he merely sought for purer 
iron and after twelve months he secured this and cast 
and finished an experimental cannon that he sent to the 
Emperor of France, who encouraged him to continue. 

To protect himself he took out a number of patents 
as his experiments developed, improvements, in which he 
specified many changes in the crucible process for mak- 
ing steel as well as for refining iron. After eighteen 
months (1855) the idea came to him that he might purify 
iron by using atmospheric oxygen. 

His first experiment was with a laboratory crucible 
holding about ten pounds of iron and using a movable 
blow pipe. The result was the softest malleable iron. 
Samples were made and tested in every way by the ex- 
perts at Woolwich Arsenal and found to be satisfactory. 
His patent was dated October, 1855. ^^^^ ^'^^^ ^^'^^ ^^^ 
steel. 

He feared that as he approached the state of pure 
iron he would not be able to secure a heat sufficiently 
high for his purpose, but made his preparations to test the 
process on a large scale. At first he built a large furnace 
to be filled with crucibles in each of which would be im- 
mersed a blast pipe. This was not altogether satisfac- 
tory and anxiety brought on a severe fit of sickness. As 
he lay on his sick bed he thought of working a crucible 
in which the air could be injected through the bottom. 

On recovering health he designed and built appara- 
tus for this purpose. 

It was a circular vessel, three feet in diameter and 
five feet high, holding about seven hundred pounds. He 
secured a small but powerful air engine and after setting 

268 



Bessemer. 

it going ordered the molten iron poured in. To the sur- 
prise and consternation of everyone there came out a 
volcanic torrent of sparks and coruscations. The air 
cock for regulating the blast was near the furnace, but no 
one dared approach it ; the cover of the furnace melted 
and disappeared, the chain which held it grew red, and 
then white-hot, but just then the sparks ceased — the fury 
was over— and when the result was tested it was found 
to be a good quality of steel. 

He immediately patented the process— February, 

1856. 

The first public announcement was made in 1856. 
It excited great interest and eagerness to try on a large 
scale. Large royalties were paid for the exclusive use 
of the process, and costly attempts were made to use it, 
but strange to say, the experiments all w^ent bad ; the 
product was useless, and the process was declared to be 
a commercial failure. 

The cause of the failure was learned afterwards by 
Bessemer himself. By mere chance his first and success- 
ful experiments were made with an iron remarkably free 
from phosphorus, while the later experiments, on a large 
scale, were all made with common iron, and the resulting 
metal, while remarkably free from carbon, was worthless 
from the excess of phosphorus. 

At first he tried ways of eliminating the phosphorus, 
but finally decided that the best and cheapest method was 
to use raw material that was free from this impurity. 
The result was a success. Iron of 99.84 per cent, purity 
was made at a cost of less than one-sixth the cost of the 
nearest approach to it by the old method. But this was 
not steel. To this end Bessemer labored, and at last 

269 



Bessemer. 

found success in the addition of a little ferro-manganese 
at the end of the blow. 

Heath had previously patented such an addition to 
ordinary steel as a means of utilizing a cheaper grade of 
raw material. Mushet held the early patents for its ap- 
plication to the Bessemer process, but Bessemer himself 
successfully defended his claim to independent discovery 
and practice. Bessemer's invention of the converter 
mounted on trunnions had an important place also in 
making the process a practical success. 

Two years after the collapse of the first interest in 
the process, Bessemer completed his experiments, and 
again laid the result before the world. This time it 
awakened no interest, so he and his partners bought up 
the old licenses and erected a steel plant of their own. 
At first their only orders were for forty and fifty pounds. 
Little by little the orders increased^ and the other steel- 
makers discovered that Bessemer was underselling them 
a hundred dollars a ton and still making an enormous 
profit. New licenses were granted at advanced rates, and 
the steel began to be generally made and used. By 1861 
the transition from the Age of Iron to the Age of Steel 
was complete. 

Bessmer is credited with L20_patents. Even after 
affluence came to him, the amazing stream of inventions 
continued, and for forty years, but a single year, 1866, 
went by without one or more patents in his name. 

Bessemer was honored immediately by the leading 
scientific society of England with a gold medal, and later 
by the various learned societies of Europe. 

The European governments promptly decorated him, 
all save his own country — England — that was benefited 
beyond all measure by his inventions. England snubbed 

270 



Bessemer. 

him for the third time by refusing to make any use of 
the steel that bears his name, and when France sought to 
bestow upon him the decoration of the Legion of Honor, 
objected. 

Twelve years after the invention was made, and when 
England was the laughing-stock of the world, she finally 
adopted his process" in her arsenals, and not until 1879 
was the honor of knighthood tardily conferred upon him. 

The year before his invention of steel-making was 
presented, England made 50,000 tons of steel at a selling 
price of $250 to $300 a ton. By 1882 the output had 
increased to 4,000,000 tons a year, which was selling far 
some $40 a ton, a saving of nearly $1,000,000,000. 

A princely sum came to Bessemer in royalties and 
profits. He died in 1898 at the advanced age of eighty- 
five. 



271 





Sir William Siemens 
1823-1883 



272 



Sir William Siemens. 



T T T 

Sir William Siemens was a great engineer. He wa§ 
one of a family of eight boys, four of whom became 
famous. The father was a thrifty German farmer and 
a descendant of farmers. The parents dying in middle 
age threw the burden of the family on the eldest son 
Werner, ^'the Berlin Siemens," who was the real founder 
of the family. The latter was educated to be a soldier, 
but his strong liking for science and mathematics drew 
him more and more toward scientific pursuits. He be- 
came superintendent of the artillery workshops and later 
on was placed in charge of the introduction of govern- 
ment telegraphs and submarine rnines. 

In 1849 ^^^ l^ft the army and with a Mr. Halske be- 
gan business as manufacturing electricians. This firm 
became very famous for their inventions and the high 
quality of their product. This firm in co-operation with 
the brothers established large branch establishments at 
London, St. Petersburg, Vienna and Paris. Werner was 
highly honored by scientific societies and was raised to the 
nobility in 1888. 

He it was who urged and made it possible for Charles 
William, the sul)ject of this sketch, to devote himself to 
engineering. 

Hans, the second son, became the head of a very 



Siemens. 

successful glass works in Dresden. Ferdinand became 
a prosperous farmer. 

Frederick was the able assistant of William, and 
after the death of Hans, carried on the Dresden Glass 
Works to higher repute. After the death of William he 
took on his manufacturing interests also. 

Carl was distinguished for the energy and practical 
skill with wdiich he co-operated with his brothers. He 
became the head of the important branch works at St. 
Petersburg. 

\\'illiam Siemens, the seventh child, was born in 
1823, and when fifteen went to a technical school near 
where A\'erner was stationed. Later he went to Gotten- 
gen to study science but by 1842 his schooling was ended 
and he was apprenticed in a machine shop. He was only 
nineteen but already was in correspondence with Werner 
about various inventions in which they had a mutual in- 
terest. 

One of these was a process for electro-plating. It 
was decided to have William go to England to sell it if 
possible. He went and soon sold it for $8,000. This 
success so elated the brothers that the next year he was 
back in England trying to sell two other inventions, a 
chronometric governor for steam engines and a process 
for copying prints. Both were very ingenious but never 
amounted to much in practice. They valued them at 
$250,000 each, and when they failed to sell them, they 
attempted to operate them themselves but only suc- 
ceeded in sinking all their own money and all they could 
borrow. 

His first success had made William over sanguine, 
and it took three years of very trying experience to bring 
him to a better balance. These years were profitable, 

274 



Siemens. 

however, in that they brought him into wide acquaintance 
with scientific men and large manufacturers. His proHfic 
ingenuity was greatly developed and had become recog- 
nized. He now undertook various engineering commis- 
sions, and became interested in the application of heat in 
the arts, a department in which he afterward became an 
authority. 

In 1847 h^ began experiments on a regenerative 
steam engine that busied him some years, and, although 
it was never made a commercial success, did effect in 
small units a considerable saving in full. The principle 
was to pass the exhaust steam through a chamber filled 
with wire gauze which became heated, and tO' pass the 
live steam through the same chamber, by which its tem- 
perature was raised from 250° to 650°. The same steam 
was then used over and over again, only enough new 
heat being added to make up for that which was trans- 
formed into power through the piston. 

A number of regenerative engines were built, from 
five to forty horsepower, but they were never a success. 
His experiments, however, brought him steadily toward, 
another application of the regenerative principle which 
was remarkably successful and which revolutionized heat- 
ing furnaces. 

While William was doing his best to make a success 
of the complex engine and evaporators, it occurred to 
Frederick in 1856 to apply the regenerative principle to 
the ordinary heating furnace. The brothers William and 
Frederick gave themselves up to this problem and made 
an immediate success of it. 

The principle is simple. It consists in passing the 
waste products of combustion through a chamber filled 
with a checker work of fire brick which absorbs most of 

275 



Siemens. 

the waste heat, which is then utiHzed to pre-heat the fuel 
and blast. Its advantage is twofold. By the direct com- 
bustion of fuel a temperature of 4,000 degrees only can 
be attained, but with the Siemens' furnace 10,000 degrees 
can easily be secured. It saves also from 50 to 80 per 
cent of the fuel necessary by the old process. A further 
improvement was made by William in the invention of 
the gas producer, in itself a very valuable invention, and 
the doing away entirely with solid fuel and ashes in the 
furnace itself. 

The regenerative furnace is of equal value in all 
processes requiring heat, but has had its highest appli- 
cation in the manufacture of steel. The patent was 
granted in 1861, and in it he stated that it was specially 
applicable in melting steel on the open hearth. The 
next year he designed the first open hearth furnace, 
using this regenerative principle for a Durham iron 
maker wdio intended to make steel from wrought iron 
and spiegeleisen, but the process was not a success. 
Other experiments followed both in England and 
France, but were abandoned from lack of success. 

Then Siemens erected his own steel works, prin- 
cipally for experimental purposes. The fiirst furnace 
was for melting crucible steel in closed pots. 

The second erected in 1867 ^vas an open hearth fur- 
nace capable of melting a charge of 2,400 pounds every 
six hours, and was successful in producing steel from 
cast iron, and also directly from the ore. In May, 
1867, the Great Western Railroad sent him a load of old 
iron rails to be made into steel. After some trials he 
did so and they were re-rolled as steel rails and used for 
many years. 

Resulting from these successful attempts the Lon- 
276 



Siemens. 

don Siemens Steel Co. was organized. This company 
intended to make steel directly from the ore and pig iron. 

About this time the brothers Martin of France, 
licensees of Siemens, succeeded in making steel in the 
open hearth by simply melting wrought iron and steel 
scrap in a bath of pig metal. 

This latter, known as the Martin-Siemens process, 
was the one generally adopted. 

By 1867 the furnace had been well tested and ap- 
plied with equal success to the manufacture of steel and 
glass and to other metalurgical operations. 

In the years that followed he made elaborate ex- 
periments with a rotating furnace for making steel di- 
rectly from the ore, but reached a commercial success. 

Before this furnace was perfected, Mr. Siemens had 
invented the rotary water meter, and also some electrical 
devices, of which we will now speak. 

It will be remembered that Werner Siemens, of 
Berlin, was deeply interested in electrical work and had 
established the shops of Siemens and Halske. The in- 
timacy between the brothers kept William in touch with 
all the inventions of Werner, for whom he acted also as 
London agent. He had a small shop in London and 
made some minor electrical inventions himself. By 
1853 he was made a full partner and the London shops 
were made a distinct branch under his sole charge. 
From this time on he began to undertake contracts for 
telegraph lines. At this time also the possibility of the 
submarine telegraph became known, and the Siemens 
Brothers being in the business from its conception be- 
came acknowledged authorities. Their work rapidly 
extended from the manufacture of instruments and 

2yy 



Siemens, 

cable, to undertaking contracts for both land and sub- 
marine lines. 

]\Ir. Siemens, in the years that followed, proved 
himself equally strong as an inventor, an engineer of 
construction, and as a promoter in securing franchises and 
capital. 

The London branch became known as Siemens 
Brothers, and the work undertaken by them was on a 
very large scale, employing in the shops as many as 
three thousand men. 

The most notable work undertaken by them was the 
construction of the Indo-European Telegraph, in 1867- 
1868, that involved raising an immense capital; diplo- 
matic negotiations with Prussia, Russia, Turkey, Persia 
and India ; building a duplicate line 2,750 miles long, 
including three submarine sections ; passage across the 
unknown and inaccessible Caucasian ^Mountains, and 
through unsettled countries peopled by semi-civilized 
races. Siemens Brothers are to be credited also with 
laying four Atlantic cables. 

The first Atlantic cable laid by Siemens was known 
as the Direct United States Cable and was successfully 
laid in 1874- 1875. For this purpose Siemens designed 
the Faraday — an iron steamship of 5,000 tons, for the 
especial use of laying deep sea cables. 

In 1856 Werner Siemens invented the first rotating 
magneto-electric machine. This Siemens armenture 
was the basis for the inventions of Wilde and Holmes, 
but it was not until 1866 that the two brothers Werner 
and William, working together discovered ''the prin- 
ciple of electro-magnetic augmentation and maintain- 
ance of current without the aid of steel or other perma- 
nent magnets.'' This was the basis of all dynamo-elec- 

278 



Siemens. 

trie machines, and the beginning of the modern use of 
electricity for lighting and power. 

In 1867 William Siemens read before the Royal 
Society his now classical paper ''on the conversion of 
dynamical into electrical force without the aid of per- 
manent magnets/' Two others discovered the same 
fact at almost the same time. 

In 1872 the brothers Werner and Frederick in- 
vented one other device that completed in a general 
way, this most powerful of modern machines. 

Other inventions of William were the pyrometer, 
for measuring high temperatures, the bathometer for 
measuring the depth at sea without sounding; improve- 
ments in steel armor plate, electric lighting, electric 
transmission and propulsion, smoke consumption ; ex- 
periments in the growth of vegetation under electric 
light, and speculations on the source of solar energy. 

By 1870 Mr. Siemens' habit of exhaustive study and 
scientific statement had become his dominant character- 
istic. He was recognized as an authority in electrical, 
heat and metalurgical engineering. He was a member 
and ofBcer of many and various scientific societies. He 
had a fondness for scientific discussion, and his papers 
and addresses were eagerly sought for by the various 
engineering societies. 

He was honored by knighthood in 1883, and at his 
death in the same year with a memorial window in 
Westminister Abbey, contributed by his brother en- 
gineers. 

As an engineer and in business he was a man of 
great versatility, energy and self-confidence, especially 
as to his money value. It is said that he made three 
fortunes, one he lost, one he gave away and one he kept. 

279 



Siemens. 

As an inventor he was clear eyed, prolific and in- 
genious. His were not sporadic ideas but were the ma- 
ture and complex results of patient and scientific con- 
sideration. Some came to little in practice, but all were 
admirable and theoretically correct. 

As a man he was ambitious and of rather an ex- 
citable temperament, but kindly and benevolent, without 
a shade of jealousy or pride. 

T T T 






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